,gv»9l<5t^ 






^ 



"■"^*^^l(^^* 



THACKERffiT 



•^It^ 



■5r 




Book ^BS 



LITTLE MASTERPIECES 



Little Masterpieces 

Edited by Bliss Perry 



W. M. THACKERAY 



SELECTIONS FROM 

THE BOOK OF SNOBS 
ROUNDABOUT PAPERS 

AND BALLADS 



NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1904 



Introduction 



There is something whimsical, one must 
confess, about the suggestion of a pocket 
Thackeray. A collection of the great scenes 
in his novels might easily be made, but your 
lover of Thackeray carries these scenes through 
the world with him without ever burdening his 
pockets. Besides, even the great scenes have 
less to do with our sense of Thackeray's com- 
mand of his art than the countless little scenes, 
inextricably interwoven, which make up the 
texture of his human comedy. But, impossible 
as it is to give any adequate representation of 
the novelist in such a series of books as the 
present one, it is quite possible to show some- 
thing of the caustic and kindly humor, the care- 
less, inevitable grace, which give Thackery's 
minor writings such a note of distinction. Even 
the most fugitive of his rollicking burlesques is 
written as no one else could have written it, 
while " The Book of Snobs " and the " Round- 
about Papers " are masterpieces of their kind. 

" The Book of Snobs " closes with a signifi- 
cant sentence : " Fun is good, Truth is still 



Introduction 

better, and Love best of all." It sums up, with 
singular appropriateness, Thackeray's career as 
a man of letters. He began with Fun: bur- 
lesque and roaring farce and witty parody. 
Then he set his hand to satire, and told for a 
while the bitter Truth, tearing the mask away 
from hypocrisy and winning his first wide 
fame. He was Punchinello no longer; he was 
the author of " Vanity Fair." It was only 
then, with fun no less sincere for being less 
uproarious, and truth the more unerring for 
being told in love, that he turned real novelist, 
the novelist of " Esmond " and " The New- 
comes." Last of all, the necessity of writing 
a monthly essay during his editorship of " The 
Cornhill Magazine " produced the " Roundabout 
Papers," where surely there is fun enough and 
truth enough, but where the spirit of love 
is nevertheless supreme. The " Roundabout 
Papers " are discursive, reminiscent, inimitable 
talk, enriched by a life-time's commerce with 
what is best in books and in society, touched 
now and then by a natural melancholy, yet 
uttered with all the old grace and with a new 
gentleness. To compare them with " The Yel- 
lowplush Papers " or " The Book of Snobs " is 
to observe the ripening of a character as well 
as the maturing of a mind. 

Thackeray's occasional verse has endeared 
itself so much to his readers that three of his 
best known poems have been reprinted here. 
In " The Ballad of Bouillabaisse " the inscrut- 



Introduction 

able chances and changes of our lot are ac- 
cepted with a poignant pathos. In " The 
Mahogany Tree " they are met with cheery 
defiance ; while in another Christmas poem, 
" The End of the Play," which depicts life 
without illusion and yet without bitterness, 
and faces the future with a curious mingling 
of antique fatalism and childlike faith, one 
seems to be listening to the very voice of the 
real Thackeray. 

Bliss Perry. 



CONTENTS 



Editor's Introduction 

The Book of Snobs— Selections 
The Snob Playfully Dealt With 
On Some Military Snobs 
On Clerical Snobs . 
On University Snobs 
On Literary Snobs 
Chapter Last .... 

Roundabout PAPERS—Selections 
On a Lazy Idle Boy 
Thorns in the Cushion . 
De Juventute .... 
On a Joke I once heard from the late 

Thomas Hood . . , 
On Being Found Out 
On Letts's Diary 
Nil Nisi Bonum 
De Finibus .... 



Ballads — Selections 

The Ballad of Bouillabaisse 
The Mahogany Tree 
The End of the Play 



PAGE 

vii 



3 

ID 
15 
19 
24 
29 

41 

51 
65 

87 
104 

130 

161 
164 
166 



The Book of Snobs 



The Book of Snobs 



THE SNOB PLAYFULLY DEALT WITH 

There are relative and positive Snobs. I 
mean by positive, such persons as a^e Snobs 
everywhere, in all companies, from morning 
till night, from youth to the grave, being by 
Nature endowed with Snobbishness — and others 
who are Snobs only in certain circumstances 
and relations of life. 

For instance: I once knew a man who com- 
mitted before me an act as atrocious as that 
which I have indicated in the last chapter as 
performed by me for the purpose of disgusting 
Colonel Snobley; viz., the using the fork in the 
guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a 
man who, dining in my company at the "Eu- 
ropa Cofi'eehouse " (opposite the Grand Opera, 
and, as everybody knows, the only decent place 
for dining at Naples,) ate peas with the assist- 
ance of his knife. He was a person with whose 
society I was greatly pleased at first — indeed, 
we had met in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, 
3 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

and were subsequently robbed and held to ran- 
som by brigands in Calabria, which is nothing 
to the purpose — a man of great powers, excel- 
lent heart, and varied information ; but I had 
never before seen him with a dish of pease, and 
his conduct in regard to them caused me the 
deepest pain. 

After having seen him thus publicly comport 
himself, but one course was open to me — to 
cut his acquaintance. I commissioned a mutual 
friend (the Honourable Poly Anthus) to break 
the matter to this gentleman as delicately as 
possible, and to say that painful circumstances 
• — in nowise affecting Mr. Marrowfat's honour, 
or my esteem for him — had occurred, which 
obliged me to forego my intimacy with him; 
and accordingly we met, and gave each other 
the cut direct that night at the Duchess of 
Monte Fiasco's ball. 

Everybody at Naples remarked the separa- 
tion of the Damon and Pythias — indeed. Mar- 
rowfat had saved my life more than once — but, 
as an English gentleman, what was I to do? 

My dear friend was, in this instance, the 
Snob relative. It is not snobbish of persons of 
rank of any other nation to employ their knife 
in the manner alluded to. I have seen Monte 
Fiasco clean his trencher with his knife, and 
every Principe in company doing likewise. 1 
have seen, at the hospitable board of H. I. H. 
the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden — (who, 
if these humble lines should come under her 
4 



The Book of Snobs 

Imperial eyes, is besought to remember gra- 
ciously the most devoted of her servants) — I 
have seen, I say, the Hereditary Princess of 
Potztausend-Donnerwetter (that serenely-beau- 
tiful woman) use her knife in lieu of a fork 
or spoon; I have seen her almost swallow it, 
by Jove! like Ranio Samee, the Indian juggler. 
And did I blench? Did my estimation for the 
Princess diminish? No, lovely Amalia! One 
of the truest passions that ever was inspired 
by woman was raised in this bosom by that 
lady. Beautiful one! long, long may the knife 
carry food to those lips! the reddest and love- 
liest in the w^orld! 

The cause of my quarrel with Marrowfat 1 
never breathed to mortal soul for four years. 
We met in the halls of the aristocracy — our 
friends and relatives. We jostled each other 
in the dance or at the board; but the estrange- 
ment continued, and seemed irrevocable, until 
the fourth of June, last year. 

We met at Sir George Golloper's. We were 
placed, he on the right, your humble servant 
on the left of the admirable Lady G. Peas 
formed part of the banquet — ducks and green 
peas. I trembled as I saw Marrowfat helped, 
and turned away sickening, lest I should be- 
hold the weapon darting dowm his horrid jaws. 

What was my astonishment, what my de- 
light, when I saw him use his fork like any 
other Christian ! He did not administer the 
cold steel once. Old times rushed back upon 
5 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

me — the remembrance of old services — his res- 
cuing me from the brigands — his gallant con- 
duct in the aiiair with the Countess Dei Spin- 
achi — his lending me the 1,700L I almost 
burst into tears with joy — my voice trembled 
with emotion. " George, my boy ! " I ex- 
claimed, "George Marrowfat, my dear fellow! 
a glass of wine! " 

Blushing — deeply moved — almost as tremu- 
lous as I was myself, George answered, " Frank, 
shall it 6e Hock or Madeira?" i could have 
hugged him to my heart but for the presence 
of the company. Little did Lady Golloper 
know what was the cause of the emotion which 
sent the duckling I was carving into her lady- 
ship's pink satin lap. The most good-natured 
of women pardoned the error, and the butler 
removed the bird. 

We have been the closest friends ever since, 
nor, of course, has George repeated his odious 
habit. He acquired it at a country school, 
where they cultivated peas and only used two- 
pronged forks, and it was only by living oh the 
Continent, where the usage of the four-prong 
is general, that he lost the horrible custom. 

In this point — and in this only — 1 confess 
myself a member of the Silver-Fork School ; and 
if this tale but induce one of my readers to 
pause, to examine in his own mind solemnly, 
and ask, " Do I or do I not eat peas with a 
knife?" — to see the ruin which may fall upon 
himself by continuing the practice, or his fam- 



The Book of Snobs 

ily by beholding the example, these lines will 
not have been written in vain. And now, 
whatever other authors may be, 1 flatter my- 
self, it will be allowed that /, at least, am a 
moral man. 

By the way, as some readers are dull of com- 
prehension, 1 may as well say what the moral 
of this history is. The moral is this — Society 
having ordained certain customs, men are bound 
to obey the law of society, and conform to its 
harmless orders. 

If I should go to the British and Foreign 
Institute (and heaven forbid I should go under 
any pretext or in any costume whatever) — if I 
should go to one of the tea-parties in a dressing- 
gown and slippers, and not in the usual attire 
of a gentleman; viz., pumps, a gold waistcoat, 
a crush hat, a sham frill, and a white choker — 
I should be insulting society, and eating pease 
with my knife. Let the porters of the Institute 
hustle out the individual who shall so ofi'end. 
Such an ofl'ender is, as regards society, a most 
emphatical and refractory Snob. It has its 
code and police as well as governments, and he 
must conform who would profit by the decrees 
set forth for their common comfort. 

I am naturally averse to egotism, and hate 
self-laudation consumedly; but I can't help re- 
lating here a circumstance illustrative of the 
point in question, in which I must think I 
acted with considerable prudence. 

Being at Constantinople a few years since — 
7 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

(on a delicate mission), — the Russians were 
playing a double game, between ourselves, and 
it became necessary on our part to employ an 
extra negotiator — Leckerbiss Pasha of Rou- 
melia, then Chief Gaieongee of the Porte, gave 
a diplomatic banquet at his summer palace at 
Bujukdere. 1 was on the left of the Galeongee, 
and the Russian agent. Count de Diddlolf, on 
his dexter side. Diddlofi" is a dandy who would 
die of a rose in aromatic pain: he had tried to 
have me assassinated three times in the course 
of the negotiation; but of course we were 
friends in public, and saluted each other in the 
most cordial and charming manner. 

The Galeongee is — or was, alas! for a bow- 
string has done for him — a staunch supporter 
of the old school of Turkish politics. We dined 
with our fingers, and had haps of bread for 
plates; the only innovation he admitted was the 
use of European liquors, in which he indulged 
with great gusto. He was an enormous eater. 
Amongst the dishes a very large one was placed 
before him of a lamb dressed in its wool, stuffed 
with prunes, garlic, assafostida, capsicums, and 
other condiments, the most abominable mixture 
that ever mortal smelt or tasted. The Gale- 
ongee ate of this hugely; and pursuing the 
Eastern fashion, insisted on helping his friends 
right and left, and when he came to a particu- 
larly spicy morsel, would push it with his own 
hands into his guests' very mouths. 

I never shall forget the look of poor Diddloff, 
8 



The Book of Snobs 

when his Excellency, rolling up a large quan- 
tity of this into a ball and exclaiming, " Buk 
Buk " (it is very good), administered the hor- 
rible bolus to DiddlotL The Russian's eyes 
rolled dreadfully as he received it: he swal- 
lowed it with a grimace that I thought must 
precede a convulsion, and seizing a bottle next 
him, which he thought was Sauterne, but which 
turned out to be French brandy, he drank off 
nearly a pint before he knew his error. It 
finished him; he was carried away from the 
dining-room almost dead, and laid out to cool 
in a summer-house on the Bosphorus. 

When it came to my turn, I took down the 
condiment with a smile, said " Bismillah," 
licked my lips with easy gratification, and when 
the next dish was served, made up a ball myself 
so dexterously, and popped it down the old 
Galeongee's mouth with so much grace, that 
his heart was won. Russia was put out of 
court at once, and the treaty of Kabobanople 
was signed. As for Diddloff, all was over with 
Mm: he was recalled to St. Petersburg, and !Sir 
Roderick Murchison saw him, under the No. 
3967, working in the Ural mines. 

The moral of this tale, I need not say, is, 
that there are many disagreeable things in 
society which you are bound to take down, 
and to do so with a smiling face. 



William Makepeace Thackeray 



ON SOME MILITARY SNOBS 

As no society in the world is more agreeable 
than that of well-bred and well-informed mili- 
tary gentlemen, so, likewise, none is more in- 
sufferable than that of Military Snobs. They 
are to be found of all grades, from the General 
Officer, whose padded old breast twinkles over 
with a score of stars, clasps, and decorations, 
to the budding cornet, who is shaving for a 
beard, and has just been appointed to the Saxe- 
Coburg Lancers. 

I have always admired that dispensation of 
rank in our country, which sets up this last- 
named little creature (who was flogged only 
last week because he could not spell) to com- 
mand great whiskered warriors, who have faced 
all dangers of climate and battle; which, be- 
cause he has money to lodge at the agent's, will 
place him over the heads of men who have a 
thousand times more experience and desert: 
and which, in the course of time, will bring 
him all the honours of his profession, when the 
veteran soldier he commanded has got no other 
reward for his bravery than a berth in Chelsea 
Hospital, and the veteran officer he superseded 
has slunk into shabby retirement, and ends 
his disappointed life on a threadbare half-, 

pay. 

When I read in the Gazette such announce- 
ments as " Lieutenant and Captain Grig, from 
10 



The Book of Snobs 

the Bombardier Guards, to be Captain, vice 
Grizzle, who retires," I know what becomes of 
the Peninsular Grizzle; I follow him in spirit 
to the humble country town, where he takes 
up his quarters, and occupies himself with the 
most desperate attempts to live like a gentle- 
man, on the stipend of half a tailor's foreman; 
and I picture to mj^self little Grig rising from 
rank to rank, skipping from one regiment to 
another, with an increased grade in each, avoid- 
ing disagreeable foreign service, and ranking as 
a colonel at thirty; — all because he has money, 
and Lord Grigsby is his father, who had the 
same luck before him. Grig must blush at first 
to give his orders to old men in every way his 
betters. And as it is very difficult for a spoiled 
child to escape being selfish and arrogant, so it 
is a very hard task indeed for this spoiled child 
of fortune not to be a Snob. 

It must have often been a matter of w^onder 
to the candid reader, that the army, the most 
enormous job of all our political institutions, 
should yet work so well in the field; and we 
must cheerfully give Grig, and his like, the 
credit for courage which they display whenever 
occasion calls for it. The Duke's dandy regi- 
ments fought as well as any (they said better 
than any, but that is absurd). The great Duke 
himself was a dandy once, and jobbed on, as 
Marlborough did before him. But this only 
proves that dandies are brave as well as other 
Britons — as all Britons. Let us concede that 
11 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

the high-born Grig rode into the entrenchments 
at Sobraon as gallantly as Corporal Wallop, the 
ex-ploughboy. 

The times of war are more favorable to him 
than the periods of peace. Think of Grig's life 
in the Bombardier Guards, or the Jackboot 
Guards ; his marches from Windsor to London, 
from London to Windsor, from Knightsbridge 
to Regent's Park ; the idiotic services he has to 
perform, which consist in inspecting the pipe- 
clay of his company, or the horses in the stable, 
or bellowing out " Shoulder humps ! Carry 
humps ! " all which duties the very smallest in- 
tellect that ever belonged to mortal man would 
suffice to comprehend. The professional duties 
of a footman are quite as difficult and various. 
The red- jackets who hold gentlemen's horses in 
St. James's Street could do the work just as 
well as those vacuous, good-natured, gentleman- 
like, rickety little lieutenants, who may be seen 
sauntering about Pall Mall, in high-heeled little 
boots, or rallying round the standard of their 
regiment in the Palace Court, at eleven o'clock, 
when the band plays. Did the beloved reader 
ever see one of the young fellows staggering 
under the flag, or, above all, going through the 
operation of saluting it? It is worth a walk to 
the Palace to witness that magnificent piece of 
tomfoolery. 

I have had the honour of meeting once or 
twice an old gentleman, whom I look upon to 
be a specimen of army-training, and who has 
12 



The Book of Snobs 

served in crack reginients, or commanded them, 
all his life. I allude to Lieutenant-General the 
Honourable Sir George Granby Tufto, K.C.B., 
K.T.S., K.H., K.S.W., &c., &c. His manners 
are irreproachable generally; in society he is 
a perfect gentleman, and a most thorough 
Snob. 

A man can't help being a fool, be he ever so 
old, and Sir (Jeorge is a greater ass at sixty- 
eight than he was when he first entered the 
army at fifteen. He distinguished himself 
everywhere: his name is mentioned with praise 
in a score of Gazettes: he is the man, in fact, 
whose padded breast, twinkling over with in- 
numerable decorations, has already been intro- 
duced to the reader. It is difficult to say what 
virtues this prosperous gentleman possesses. He 
never read a book in his life, and, with his 
purple, old gouty fingers, still writes a school- 
boy hand. He has reached old age and grey 
hairs without being the least venerable. He 
dresses like an outrageously young man to the 
present moment, and laces and pads his old 
carcass as if he were still handsome George 
Tufto of 1800. He is selfish, brutal, passionate, 
and a glutton. It is curious to mark him at 
table, and see him heaving in his waistband, 
his little bloodshot eyes gloating over his meal. 
He swears considerably in his talk, and tells 
filthy garrison stories after dinner. On account 
of his rank and his services, people pay the be- 
starred and betitled old brute a sort of rever- 
13 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

ence ; and he looks down upon you and me, 
and exhibits his contempt for us, with a stupid 
and artless candour which is quite amusing to 
watch. Perhaps, had he been bred to another 
profession, he would not have been the dis- 
reputable old creature he now is. But what 
other? He was fit for none; too incorrigibly 
idle and dull for any trade but this, in which 
he has distinguished himself publicly as a good 
and gallant officer, and privately for riding 
races, drinking port, fighting duels, and seduc- 
ing women. He believes himself to be one of 
the most honourable and deserving beings in 
the world. About Waterloo Place, of after- 
noons, you may see him tottering in his var- 
nished boots, and leering under the bonnets of 
the women who pass by. When he dies of 
apoplexy. The Times will have a quarter of a 
column about his services and battles — four 
lines of print will be wanted to describe his 
titles and orders alone — and the earth will cover 
one of the wickedest and dullest old wretches 
that ever strutted over it. 

Lest it should be imagined that I am of so 
obstinate a misanthropic nature as to be satis- 
fied with nothing, I beg (for the comfort of the 
forces) to state my belief that the army is not 
composed of such persons as the above. He 
has only been selected for the study of civilians 
and the military, as a specimen of a prosperous 
and bloated Army Snob. No: when epaulets 
are not sold; when corporal punishments are 
14 



The Book of Snobs 

abolished, and Corporal Smith has a chance to 
have his gallantry rewarded as well as that of 
Lieutenant Grig; when there is no such rank 
as ensign and lieutenant (the existence of 
which rank is an absurd anomaly, and an insult 
upon all the rest of the army), and should there 
be no war, I should not be disinclined to be a 
major-general myself. 

I have a little sheaf of Army Snobs in my 
portfolio, but shall pause in my attack upon 
the forces till next week. 



ON CLERICAL SNOBS 

After Snobs-Military, Snobs-Clerical suggest 
themselves quite naturally, and it is clear that, 
with every respect for the cloth, yet having a 
regard for truth, humanity, and the British 
public, such a vast and influential class must 
not be omitted from our notices of the great 
Snob world. 

Of these Clerics there are some whose claim 
to snobbishness is undoubted, and yet it cannot 
be discussed here; for the same reason that 
Punch would not set up his show in a Cathe- 
dral, out of respect for the solemn service cele- 
brated within. There are some places where 
he acknowledges himself not privileged to make 
a noise, and puts away his show, and silences 
his drum, and takes off his hat, and holds his 
peace. 

15 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

And I know this, that if there are some Cler- 
ics who do wrong, there are straightway a 
thousand newspapers to haul up those unfor- 
tunates, and cry, " Fie upon them, fie upon 
them ! " while, though the press is always ready 
to yell and bellow excommunication against 
these stray delinquent parsons, it somehow 
takes very little count of the many good ones 
— of the tens of thousands of honest men, who 
lead Christian lives, who give to the poor gen- 
erously, who deny themselves rigidly, and live 
and die in their duty, without ever a newspaper 
paragraph in their favour. My beloved friend 
and reader, I wish you and I could do the same: 
and let me whisper my belief, cntre nous, that 
of those eminent philosophers who cry out 
against parsons the loudest, there are not many 
who have got their knowledge of the church 
by going thither often. 

But you who have ever listened to village 
bells, or have walked to church as children on 
sunny Sabbath mornings; you who have ever 
seen the parson's wife tending the poor man's 
bedside; or the town clergyman threading the 
dirty stairs of noxious alleys upon his sacred 
business: — do not raise a shout when one of 
these falls away, or yell with the mob that 
howls after him. 

Every man can do that. When old Father 

Noah was overtaken in his cups, there was only 

one of his sons that dared to make merry at 

his disaster, and he was not the most virtuous 

16 



The Book of Snobs 

of the family. Let us too turn away silently, 
nor huzza like a parcel of school-boys, because 
some big young rebel suddenly starts up and 
whops the schoolmaster. 

I confess, though, if I had by me the names 
of those seven or eight Irish bishops, the pro- 
bates of whose wills were mentioned in last 
year's journals, and who died leaving behind 
them some two hundred thousand pounds 
a-piece — 1 would like to put them up as patrons 
of my Clerical Snobs, and operate upon them as 
successfully as I see from the newspapers Mr. 
Eisenberg, Chiropodist, has lately done upon 
" His Grace the Eight Reverend Lord Bishop 
of Tapioca." 

And 1 confess that when these Right Rever- 
end prelates come up to the gates of Paradise 
with their probates of wills in their hands, 1 
think that their chance is . . . But the gates 
of Paradise is a far way to follow their Lord- 
ships; so let us trip down again, lest awkward 
questions be asked there about our own favour- 
ite vices too. 

And don't let us give way to the vulgar pre- 
judice, that clergymen are an over-paid and 
luxurious body of men. When that eminent 
ascetic, the late Sydney Smith — (by the way, 
by what law of nature is it that so many 
Smiths in this world are called Sydney Smith?) 
^lauded the system of great prizes in the 
3 17 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Church, — without which he said gentlemen 
would not be induced to follow the clerical 
profession, he admitted most pathetically that 
the clergy in general were by no means to be 
envied for their worldly prosperity. From 
reading the works of some modern writers of 
repute, you would fancy that a parson's life 
was passed in gorging himself with plum-pud- 
ding and port- wine; and that his Reverence's 
fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling 
of tithe pigs. Caricaturists delight to represent 
him so: round, short-necked, pimple-faced, 
apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat, like a 
black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Si- 
lenus. Whereas, if you take the real man, the 
poor fellow's flesh-pots are very scantily fur- 
nished with meat. He labours commonly for 
a wage that a tailor's foreman would despise: 
he has, too, such claims upon his dismal income 
as most philosophers would rather grumble to 
meet; many tithes are levied upon Ms pocket, 
let it be remembered, by those who grudge him 
his means of livelihood. He has to dine with 
the Squire: and his wife must dress neatly; 
and he must " look like a gentleman," as they 
call it, and bring up his six great hungry sons 
as such. Add to this, if he does his duty, he 
has such temptations to spend his money as no 
mortal man could withstand. Yes; you who 
can't resist purchasing a chest of cigars, because 
they are so good; or an ormolu clock at Howell 
and James's, because it is such a bargain; or a 
18 



The Book of Snobs 

box at the Opera, because Lablaehe and Grisi 
are divine in the Puritani; fancy how difficult 
it is for a parson to resist spending a half-crown 
when John Breakstone's family are without a 
loaf; or "standing" a bottle of port for poor 
old Polly Eabbits, who has her thirteenth child; 
or treating himself to a suit of corduroys for 
little Bob Scarecrow, whose breeches are sadly 
out at elbows. Think of these temptations, 
brother moralists and philosophers, and don't 
be too hard on the parson. 

But what is this ? Instead of " showing up " 
the parsons, are we indulging in maudlin praises 
of that monstrous black-coated race ? O saintly 
Francis, lying at rest under the turf; Jimmy, 
and Johnny, and Willy, friends of my youth! 
O noble and dear old Elias ! how should he who 
knows you not respect you and your calling? 
May this pen never write a pennyworth again, 
if it ever casts ridicule upon either! 



ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS 

I SHOULD like to fill several volumes with 
accounts of various University Snobs; so fond 
are my reminiscences of them, and so numerous 
are they. I should like to speak, above all, of 
the wives and daughters of some of the Pro- 
fessor-Snobs; their amusements, habits, jealous- 
ies; their innocent artifices to entrap young 
19 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

men; their picnics, concerts, and evening- 
parties. I wonder 'vhat has become of Emily- 
Blades, daughter of Blades, the Professor of the 
Mandingo language? I remember her shoulders 
to this day, as she sat in the midst of a crowd 
of about seventy young gentlemen, from Corpus 
and Catherine Hall, entertaining them with 
ogles and French songs on the guitar. Are you 
married, fair Emily of the shoulders? What 
beautiful ringlets those were that used to drib- 
ble over them! — what a waist! — what a killing 
sea-green shot-silk gown! — what a cameo, the 
size of a muffin! There were thirty-six young 
men of the University in love at one time with 
Emily Blades: and no words are sufficient to 
describe the pity, the sorrow, the deep, deep 
commiseration — the rage, fury, and uncharit- 
ableness, in other words — with which the Miss 
Trumps (daughter of Trumps, the Professor of 
Phlebotomy) regarded her, because she didn't 
squint, and because she icasn't marked with the 
small-pox. 

As for the young University Snobs, I am 
getting too old, now, to speak of such very 
familiarly. My recollections of them lie in the 
far, far past — almost as far back as Pelham's 
time. 

We tlien used to consider Snobs raw-looking 
lads, who never missed chapel; who wore high- 
lows and no straps; who walked two hours on 
the Trumpington road every day of their lives; 
who carried of!' the college scholarships, and 
20 



The Book of Snobs 

who overrated themselves in halh We were 
premature in pronouncing our verdict of youth- 
ful Snobbishness. The man without straps ful- 
filled his destiny and duty. He eased his old 
governor, the curate in Westmoreland, or helped 
his sisters to set up the Ladies' School. He 
wrote a " Dictionary," or a " Treatise on Conic 
Sections,'' as his nature and genius prompted. 
He got a fellowship: and then took to himself 
a wife, and a living. He presides over a parish 
now, and thinks it rather a dashing thing to 
belong to the "Oxford and Cambridge Club"; 
and his parishioners love him, and snore under 
his sermons. No, no, Jie is not a Snob. It is 
not strains that make the gentleman, or high- 
lows that unmake him, be they ever so thick. 
My son, it is you who are the Snob if you 
lightly despise a man for doing his duty, and 
refuse to shake an honest man's hand because 
it wears a Berlin glove. 

We then used to consider it not the least 
vulgar for a parcel of lads who had been 
whipped three months previous, and were not 
allowed more than three glasses of port at 
home, to sit down to pineapples and ices at 
each other's rooms, and fuddle themselves with 
champagne and claret. 

One looks back to what was called " a wine- 
party " with a sort of wonder. Thirty lads 
round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, 
drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing 
bad songs over and over again. Milk punch 
21 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

— smoking — ghastly headache — frightful spec- 
tacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell 
of tobacco — your guardian, the clergyman, 
dropj)ing in, in the midst of this — expecting to 
find you deep in Algebra, and discovering the 
Gyp administering soda-water. 

There were young men who despised the lads 
who indulged in the coarse hospitalities of wine- 
parties, who prided themselves in giving re- 
cherche little French dinners. Both wine-party- 
givers and dinner-givers were Snobs. 

There were what used to be called " dressy " 
Snobs: — Jimmy, who might be seen at live 
o'clock elaborately rigged out, with a camellia 
in his button-hole, glazed boots, and fresh kid- 
gloves twice a day; — Jessamy, who was con- 
spicuous for his " jewellery," — a young donkey, 
glittering all over wuth chains, rings, and shirt- 
studs ; — Jacky, who rode every day solemnly on 
the Blenheim Road, in pumps and white silk 
stockings, with his hair curled, — all three of 
whom flattered themselves they gave laws to 
the University about dress — all three most 
odious varieties of Snobs. 

Sporting Snobs of course there were, and are 
always — those happy beings in whom Nature 
has implanted a love of slang: who loitered 
about the horsekeeper's stables, and drove the 
London coaches— a stage in and out— and might 
be seen swaggering through the courts in pink 
of early mornings, and indulged in dice and 
blmd-hookey at nights, and never missed a race 



The Book of Snobs 

or a boxing-match; and rode flat-races, and 
kept bull-terriers. Worse Snobs even than 
these were poor miserable wretches who did not 
like hunting at all, and could not afford it, 
and were in mortal fear at a two-foot ditch; 
but who hunted because Glenlivat and Cinqbars 
hunted. The Billiard Snob and the Boating 
Snob were varieties of these, and are to be 
found elsewhere than in universities. 

Then there were Philosophical Snobs, who 
used to ape statesmen at the spouting-clubs, 
and who believed as a fact that Government 
always had an eye on the University for the 
selection of orators for the House of Commons. 
There were audacious young free-thinkers, who 
adored nobody or nothing, except perhaps 
Eobespierre and the Koran, and panted for the 
day when the pale name of priest should shrink 
and dwindle away before the indignation of an 
enlightened world. 

But the worst of all University Snobs are 
those unfortunates who go to rack and ruin 
from their desire to ape their betters. Smith 
becomes acquainted with great people at col- 
lege, and is ashamed of his father the trades- 
man. Jones has line acquaintances, and lives 
after their fashion like a gay free-hearted fel- 
low as he is, and ruins his father, aijd robs 
his sister's portion, and cripples his younger 
brother's outset in life, for the pleasure of en- 
tertaining my lord, and riding by the side of 
Sir John. And though it may be very good 
23 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

fun for Robinson to fuddle himself at home as 
he does at College, and to be brought home by 
the policeman he has just been trying to knock 
down — think what fun it is for the poor old 
soul his mother! — the half-pay captain's widow, 
who has been pinching herself all her life long, 
in order that that jolly young fellow might 
have a University education. 



ON LITERARY SNOBS 

What will he say about Literary Snobs? has 
been a question, I make no doubt, often asked 
by the public. How can he let off his own 
profession? Will that truculent and unsparing 
monster who attacks the nobility, the clergy, 
the army, and the ladies, indiscriminately, hesi- 
tate when the turn comes to egorger his own 
flesh and blood? 

My dear and excellent querist, whom does 
the schoolmaster hog so resolutely as his own 
son? Didn't Brutus chop his offspring's head 
off? You have a very bad opinion indeed of 
the present state of literature and of literary 
men, if you fancy that any one of us would 
hesitate to stick a knife into his neighbour 
penman, if the latter's death could do the State 
any service. 

But the fact is, that in the literary profession 
there are no Sxobs. Look round at the whole 
body of British men of letters, and I defy you 
24 



The Book of Snobs 

to point out among them a single instance of 
vulgarity, or envy, or assumption. 

Men and women, as far as I have known 
them, they are all modest in their demeanour, 
elegant in their manners, spotless in their lives, 
and honourable in their conduct to the world 
and to each other. You may, occasionally, it 
is true, hear one literary man abusing his 
brother; but why? Not in the least out of 
malice; not at all from envy; merely from a 
sense of truth and public duty. Suppose, for 
instance, I good-naturedly point out a blemish 
in my friend Mr. Punch's person, and say, 
3Ir. P. has a hump-back, and his nose and chin 
are more crooked than those features in the 
Apollo or Antinous, which we are accustomed 
to consider as our standards of beauty; does 
this argue malice on my part towards Mr. 
Punch? Not in the least. It is the critic's 
duty to point out defects as well as merits, and 
he invariably does his duty with the utmost 
gentleness and candour. 

An intelligent foreigner's testimony about 
our manners is always worth having, and I 
think, in this respect, the work of an eminent 
American, Mr. N. P. Willis, is eminently valu- 
able and impartial. In his " History of Ernest 
Clay," a crack magazine-writer, the reader will 
get an exact account of the life of a popular 
man of letters in England. He is always the 
great lion of society. 

He takes the pas of dukes and earls; all the 
25 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

nobility crowd to see him: I forget how many 
baronesses and duchesses fall in love with him. 
liut on this subject let us hold our tongues. 
Modesty forbids that we should reveal the 
names of the heartbroken countesses and dear 
marchionesses who are pining for every one of 
the contributors in Punch. 

If anybody wants to know how intimately 
authors are connected with the fashionable 
world, they have but to read the genteel novels. 
What refinement and delicacy pervades the 
works of Mrs. Barnaby! What delightful good 
company do you meet with in Mrs. Armytage! 
She seldom introduces you to anybody under a 
marquis! 1 don't know anything more deli- 
cious than the pictures of genteel life in " Ten 
Thousand a Year," except perhaps the " Young 
Duke," and " Coningsby." There's a modest 
grace about them, and an air of easy high 
fashion, which only belongs to blood, my dear 
Sir — to true blood. 

And what linguists many of our writers are! 
Lady Bulwer, Lady Londonderry, Sir Edward 
himself — they write the French language with 
a luxiu'ious elegance and ease which sets them 
far above their continental rivals, of whom not 
one (except Paul de Kock) knows a word of 
English. 

And what Briton can read without enjoyment 

the works of James, so admirable for terseness; 

and the playful humour and dazzling off-hand 

lightness of Ainsworth? Among other hu- 

26 



The Book of Snobs 

mourists, one might glance at a Jerrold, the 
chivalrous advocate of Toryism and Church 
and State; an a Beckett, with a lightsome pen, 
but a savage earnestness of purpose; a Jeames, 
whose pure style, and wit unmingled with buf- 
foonery, was relished by a congenial public. 

Speaking of critics, perhaps there never was 
a review that has done so much for literature 
as the admirable Quarterly. It has its jjre- 
judices, to be sure, as which of us has not? It 
goes out of its way to abuse a great man, or 
lays mercilessly on to such pretenders as Keats 
and Tennyson; but, on the other hand, it is 
the friend of all young authors, and has marked 
and nurtured all the rising talent of the coun- 
try. It is loved by everybody. There, again, 
is Blackwood's Magazine — conspicuous for mod- 
est elegance and amiable satire; that review 
never passes the bounds of politeness in a joke. 
It is the arbiter of manners; and, while gently 
exposing the foibles of Londoners (for whom 
the beaux esprits of Edinburgh entertain a 
justifiable contempt), it is never coarse in its 
fun. The fiery enthusiasm of the AtJienwuni is 
well known: and the bitter wit of the too diffi- 
cult Literary Gazette. The Examiner is per- 
haps too timid, and the Spectator too boisterous 
in its praise — but who can carp at these minor 
faults? No, no; the critics of England and the 
authors of England are unrivalled as a body;' 
and hence it becomes impossible for us to find 
fault with them. 

27 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Above all, I never knew a man of letters 
ashamed of Ms profession. Those who know 
us, know what an affectionate and brotherly- 
spirit there is among us all. Sometimes one of 
us rises in the world; we never attack him or 
sneer at him under those circumstances, but 
rejoice to a man at his success. If Jones dines 
with a lord, Smith never says Jones is a cour- 
tier and a cringer. Nor, on the other hand, 
does Jones, who is in the habit of frequenting 
the society of great people, give himself any 
airs on account of the company he keeps; but 
will leave a duke's arm in Pall Mall to come 
over and speak to poor Brown, the young 
penny-a-liner. 

That sense of equality and fraternity 
amongst authors has always struck me as one 
of the most amiable characteristics of the class. 
It is because we know and respect each other, 
that the world respects us so much; that we 
hold such a good position in society, and de- 
mean ourselves so irreproachably when there. 

Literary persons are held in such esteem by 
the nation, that about two of them have been 
absolutely invited to court during the present 
reign; and it is probable that towards the end 
of the season, one or two will be asked to 
dinner by^ Sir Robert Peel. 

They are such favourites with the public, 

that they are continually obliged to have their 

pictures taken and published; and one or two 

could be pointed out, of whom the nation in- 

38 



The Book of Snobs 

sists upon having a fresh portrait every year. 
Nothing can be more gratifying than this proof 
of the afiectionate regard which the people has 
for its instructors. 

Literature is held in such honour in England, 
that there is a sum of near twelve hundred 
pounds per annum set apart to pension deserv- 
ing persons following that profession. And a 
great compliment this is, too, to the professors, 
and a proof of their generally prosperous and 
flourishing condition. They are generally so 
rich and thrifty, that scarcely any money is 
wanted to help them. 

If every word of this is true, how^ I should like 
to know, am I to write about Literary Snobs? 



CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS ON SNOBS 

How it is that we have come to No. 45 of 
this present series of papers, my dear friends 
and brother Snobs, I hardly know — but for a 
whole mortal year have we been together, 
prattling, and abusing the human race; and 
were we to live for a hundred years more, I 
believe there is plenty of subject for conversa- 
tion in the enormous theme of Snobs. 

The national mind is awakened to the sub- 
ject. Letters pour in every day, conveying 
marks of sympathy ; directing the attention of 
the Snob of England to races of Snobs yet 
undescribed. " Where are your Theatrical 
39 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Snobs; your Commercial Snobs; your Medical 
and Chirurgical Snobs; your Official Snobs; 
your Legal Snobs; your Artistical Snobs; your 
Musical Snobs ; your Sporting Snobs ?" write my 
esteemed correspondents. " Surely you are not 
going to miss the Cambridge Chancellor elec- 
tion, and omit showing up your Don Snobs, 
who are coming, cap in hand, to a young Prince 
of six-and-twenty, and to implore him to be 
the chief of their renowned University ? " writes 
a friend who seals with the signet of the Cam 
and Isis Club. " Pray, pray," cries another, 
" now the Operas are opening, give us a lecture 
about Omnibus Snobs." Indeed, I should like 
to write a chapter about the Snobbish Dons 
very much, and another about the Snobbish 
Dandies. Of my dear Theatrical Snobs I think 
with a pang; and I can hardly break away 
from some Snobbish artists, with whom I have 
long, long intended to have a palaver. 

But what's the use of delaying? When these 
were done there would be fresh Snobs to pour- 
tray. The labour is endless. No single man 
could complete it. Here are but fifty-two 
bricks — and a pyramid to build. It is best to 
stop. As Jones always quits the room as soon 
as he has said his good thing— as Cincin- 
natus and General Washington both retired 
into private life in the height of their popu- 
larity — as Prince Albert, when he laid the first 
stone of the Exchange, left the bricklayers to 
complete that edifice and went home to his 
30 



The Book of Snobs 

royal dinner — as the poet Bunn comes forward 
at the end of the season, and with feelings too 
tumultuous to describe, blesses his kyiiid friends 
over the footlights: so, friends, in the flush of 
conquest and the splendour of victory, amid the 
shouts and the plaudits of a people — trium- 
phant yet modest — the Snob of England bids ye 
farewell. 

But only for a season. Not for ever. No, no. 
There is one celebrated author whom I ad- 
mire very much — who has been taking leave of 
the public any time these ten years in his pre- 
faces, and always comes back again when every- 
body is glad to see him. How can he have the 
heart to be saying good-bye so often? I believe 
that Bunn is affected when he blesses the 
people. Parting is always painful. Even the, 
familiar bore is dear to you. I should be sorry 
to shake hands even with Jawkins for the last 
time. I think a well-constituted convict, on 
coming home from transportation, ought to be 
rather sad when he takes leave of Van Diemen's 
Land. When the curtain goes down on the 
last night of a pantomime, poor old clown must 
be very dismal, depend on it. Ha! with what 
joy he rushes forward on the evening of the 
26th of December next, and says — " How are 
you? — Here we are! " But I am growing too 
sentimental: — to return to the theme. 

The national mind is awakened to the 
SUBJECT OF SNOBS. The word Snob has taken 
31 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

a place in our honest English vocabulary. We 
can't define it, perhaps. We can't say what it 
is, any more than we can define wit, or humour, 
or humbug; but we k)iow what it is. Some 
weeks since, happening to have the felicity to 
sit next to a young lady at a hospitable table, 
where poor old Jawkins was holding forth in a 
very absurd pompous manner, 1 wrote upon the 

spotless damask " S B," and called my 

neighbour's attention to the little remark. 

That young lady smiled. She knew it at 
once. Her mind straightway filled up the two 
letters concealed by apostrophic reserve, and I 
read in her assenting eyes that she knew Jaw- 
kins was * Snob. You seldom get them to 
make use of the word as yet, it is true; but it 
is inconceivable how pretty an expression their 
little smiling mouths assume when they speak 
it out. If any young lady doubts, just let her 
go up to her own room, look at herself steadily 
in the glass, and say " Snob." If she tries this 
simple experiment, my life for it, she will smile, 
and own that the word becomes her mouth 
amazingly. A pretty little round word, all 
composed of soft letters, with a hiss at the 
beginning, just to make it piquant, as it were. 

Jawkins, meanwhile, went on blundering, and 
bragging, and boring, quite unconsciously. And 
so he will, no doubt, go on roaring and braying, 
to the end of time, or at least so long as people 
will hear Lim. You cannot alter the nature of 
men and Snobs by any force of satire; as, by 
*o2 



The Book of Snobs 

laying ever so many stripes on a donkey's back, 
you can't turn tiini into a zebra. 

But we can warn the neighbour-hood that the 
person whom they and Jawkins admire is an 
impostor. We can apply the iSnob test to him, 
and try whether he is conceited and a quack, 
whether pompous and lacking humility — • 
whether uncharitable and proud of his narrow 
soul. How does he treat a great man — how 
regard a small one? How does he comport 
himself in the presence of His Grace the Duke; 
and how in that of Smith, the tradesman? 

And it seems to me that all English society 
is cursed by this mammoniacal superstition; 
and that we are sneaking and bowing and 
cringing on the one hand, or bullying and 
scorning on the other, from the lowest to the 
highest. My wife speaks with great circum- 
spection — " proper pride," she calls it — to our 
neighbour the tradesman's lady: and she, I 
mean Mrs. Snob — Eliza — would give one of her 
eyes to go to Court, as her cousin, the Captain's 
wife, did. She, again, is a good soul, but it 
costs her agonies to be obliged to confess that 
we live in Upper Thompson Street, Somers 
Town. And though I believe in her heart Mrs. 
Whiskerington is fonder of us than of her 
cousins, the Smigsmags, you should hear how 
she goes on prattling about Lady Smigsmag — • 
and " I said to Sir John, my dear John ; " and 
about the Smigsmags' house and parties in 
Hyde Park Terrace. 

3 33 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Lady Smigsmag, when she meets Eliza — who 
is a sort of a kind of a species of a connection 
of the family, pokes out one finger, which my 
wife is at liberty to embrace in the most cordial 
manner she can devise. But oh, you should see 
her ladyship's behaviour on her first-chop din- 
ner-party days, when Lord and Lady Longears 
come ! 

I can bear it no longer — this diabolical inven- 
tion of gentility which kills natural kindliness 
and honest friendship. Proper pride, indeed! 
Rank and precedence, forsooth! The table of 
ranks and degrees is a lie, and should be flung 
into the fire. Organize rank and precedence! 
that was well for the masters of ceremonies of 
former ages. Come forward, some great mar- 
shal, and organize Equality in society, and your 
rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court 
gold-sticks. If this is not gospel-truth — if the 
World does not tend to this — if hereditary-great- 
man worship is not a humbug and an idolatry 
— let us have the Stuarts back again, and crop 
the Free Press's ears in the pillory. 

If ever our cousins, the Smigsmags, asked me 
to meet Lord Longears, I would like to take 
an opportunity after dinner and say, in the 
most good-natured way in the world: — Sir, For- 
tune makes you a present of a number of thou- 
sand pounds every year. The ineffable wisdom 
of our ancestors has placed you as a chief and 
hereditary legislator over me. Our admirable 
Constitution (the pride of Britons and envy of 
34 



The Book of Snobs 

surrounding nations) obliges me to receive you 
as my senator, superior, and guardian. Your 
eldest son, Fitz-Heehaw, is sure of a place in 
Parliament; your younger sons, the De Brays, 
will kindly condescend to be post-captains and 
lieutenants-colonels, and to represent us in for- 
eign courts or to take a good living when it 
falls convenient. These prizes our admirable 
Constitution (the pride and envy of, &c.) pro- 
nounces to be your due: without count of your 
dulness, your vices, your selfishness; or your 
entire incapacity and folly. Dull as you may 
be (and we have as good a right to assume that 
my lord is an ass, as the other proposition, that 
he is an enlightened patriot) — dull, I say, as you 
may be, no one will accuse you of such mon- 
strous folly, as to suppose that you are indif- 
ferent to the good luck which you possess, or 
have any inclination to part with it. No — an>^ 
patriots as we are, under happier circumstances. 
Smith and I, I have no doubt, were we dukes 
ourselves, would stand by our order. 

We would submit good-naturedly to sit in a 
high place. We would acquiesce in that admir- 
able Constitution (pride and envy of, &c.) 
which made us chiefs and the world our in- 
feriors; we would not cavil particularly at that 
notion of hereditary superiority which brought 
so many simple people cringing to our knees. 
May be we would rally round the Corn-Laws; 
we would make a stand against the Reform 
Bill; we would die rather than repeal the Acts 
35 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

against Catholics and Dissenters; we would, by 
our noble system of class-legislation, bring Ire- 
land to its present admirable condition. 

But Smith and I are not Earls as yet. We 
don't believe that it is for the interest of 
Smith's army that young De Bray should be a 
Colonel at five-and-twenty — of Smith's diplo- 
matic relations that Lord Longears should go 
Ambassador to Constantinople — of our politics, 
that Longears should put his hereditary foot 
into them. 

This bowing and cringing Smith believes to 
be the act of Snobs; and he will do all in his 
might and main to be a Snob and to submit to 
Snobs no longer. To Longears he says, " We 
can't help seeing, Longears, that we are as good 
as you. We can spell even better; we can think 
quite as rightly; we will not have you for our 
master, or black your shoes any more. Your 
footmen do it, but they are paid; and the fel- 
low who comes to get a list of the company 
when you give a banquet or a dancing break- 
fast at Longueoreille House, gets money from 
the newspapers for performing that service. 
But for us, thank you for nothing, Longears, 
my boy, and we don't wish to pay you any 
more than we owe. We will take ofi' our hats 
to Wellington because he is Wellington; but to 
you — who are you ? " 

I am sick of Court Circulars. I loathe 
haut-ton intelligence. I believe such words as 
Fashionable, Exclusive, Aristocratic, and the 
3G 



The Book of Snobs 

like, to be wicked, unchristian epithets, that 
ought to be banished from honest vocabularies. 
A Court system that sends men of genius to 
the second table, I hold to be a Snobbish sys- 
tem. A society that sets up to be polite, and 
ignores Arts and Letters, I hold to be a Snob- 
bish society. You, who despise your neighbour, 
are a Snob; you, who forget your own friends, 
meanly to follow after those of a higher degree, 
are a Snob; you, who are ashamed of your pov- 
erty, and blush for your calling, are a Snob, 
as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are 
proud of your wealth. 

To laugh at such is Mr. Punch's business. 
May he laugh honestly, hit no foul blow, and 
tell the truth when at his very broadest grin — 
never forgetting that if Fun is good, Truth is 
still better, and Love best of all. 



37 



Roundabout Papers 



Roundabout Papers 



ON A LAZY IDLE BOY 

I HAD occasion to pass a week in the autumn 
in the little old town of Coire or Chur, in the 
Orisons, where lies buried that very ancient 
British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* who 
founded the Church of St. Peter, on Cornhill. 
Few people note the church now-a-days, and 
fewer ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral 
at Chur, his statue appears surrounded by other 
sainted persons of his family. With tight red 
breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, 
and a neat little gilt crown and sceptre, he 
stands, a very comely and cheerful image: and, 
from what I may call his peculiar position with 

* Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, " from the table 
fast chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill ; " and says, 
" he was after some chronicle buried at London, and after 
some chronicle buried at Glowcester "—but, oh ! these 
incorrect chroniclers ! when Alban Butler, in the " Lives 
of the Saints," v. xii., and Murray's "Handbook," and the 
Sacristan at Chur, all say lAicius was killed there, and I saw 
his tomb with my own eyes ! 

41 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

regard to Cornhill, I beheld this figure of St. 
Lucius witli more interest than I should have 
bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, 
are, I dare say, his superiors. 

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at 
the end of the world — of the world of to-day, 
the world of rapid motion, and rushing rail- 
ways, and the commerce and intercourse of men. 
From the northern gate, the iron road stretches 
away to Ziirich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. 
From the old southern barriers, before which a 
little river rushes, and aroufid which stretch 
the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, 
the road bears the slow diligence or lagging 
vetturino by the shallow Rhine, through the 
awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently 
over the Spliigen to the shores of Como. 

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, 
pretty, calm, and pastoral than this remote 
little Chur. What need have the inhabitants 
of walls and ramparts, except to build summer- 
houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry 
on them? No enemies approach the great 
mouldering gates: only at morn and even the 
cow^s come lowing past them, the village maid- 
ens chatter merrily round the fountains, and 
babble like the ever-voluble stream that flows 
under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book 
and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the 
gymnasium, and return thence at their stated 
time. There is one coflee-house in the town, 
and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There 
42 



Roundabout Papers 

are shops with no customers seemingly, and the 
lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows 
at the single stranger sauntering by. There is 
a stall with baskets of queer little black grapes 
and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with half- 
a-dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond 
this, there is scarce any talk or movement in 
the street. There's nobody at the book-shop. 
" If you will have the goodness to come again 
in an hour," says the banker, with his mouth- 
ful of dinner at one o'clock, " you can have the 
money." There is nobody at the hotel, save 
the good landlady, the kind waiters, the brisk 
young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is 
in the Protestant church — oh! strange sight, 
the two confessions are here at peace! — nobody 
in the Catholic church: until the sacristan, from 
his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the 
traveller eyeing the monsters and pillars before 
the old shark-toothed arch of his cathedral, and 
comes out (with a view to remuneration pos- 
sibly) and opens the gate, and shows you the 
venerable church, and the queer old relics in 
the sacristy, and the ancient vestments (a black 
velvet cope, amongst other robes, as fresh as 
yesterday, and presented by that notorious 
" pervert," Henry of Navarre and France) , and 
the statue of St. Lucius who built St. Peter's 
Church, on Cornhill. 

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty 
old town! Has it been asleep these hundreds 
and hundreds of years, and is the brisk young 
43 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his screaming 
car drawn by his snorting steel elephant coming 
to waken it? Time was when there must have 
been life and bustle and commerce here. Those 
vast, venerable walls were not made to keep 
out cows, but men-at-arms, led by fierce cap- 
tains, who prowled about the gates, and robbed 
the traders as they passed in and out with their 
bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and their 
wains. Is the place so dead that even the 
clergy of the different denominations can't 
quarrel? Why, seven or eight, or a dozen, or 
fifteen hundred years ago (they haven't the 
register at St. Peter's up to that remote period 
• — I dare say it was burnt in the fire of London) 
— a dozen hundred years ago, -when there was 
some life in the town, St. Lucius was stoned 
here on account of theological differences, after 
founding our church in Cornhill. 

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used 
to take in the evening and mark the mountains 
round glooming with a deeper purple; the 
shades creeping up the golden walls; the river 
brawling, the cattle calling, the maids and 
chatterboxes round the fountains babbling and 
bawling; and several times in the course of our 
sober walks we overtook a lazy slouching boy, 
or hobbledehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers 
not too long, and big feet trailing lazily one 
after the other, and large lazy hands dawdling 
from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy 
hands a little book, Avhich my lad held up to 
44 



Roundabout Papers 

his face, and which I dare say so charmed and 
ravished him, that he was blind to the beauti- 
ful sights around him; unmindful, I would ven- 
ture to lay any wager, of the lessons he had to 
learn for to-morrow; forgetful of mother wait- 
ing supper, and father preparing a scolding; — 
absorbed utterly and entirely in his book. 

What was it that so fascinated the young 
student, as he stood by the river shore? Not 
the Pons Asinorimi. What book so delighted 
him, and blinded him to all the rest of the 
world, so that he did not care to see the apple- 
woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still 
to sons of Eve) the pretty girls with their apple 
cheeks, who laughed and prattled round the 
fountain ? What was the book ? Do you sup- 
pose it was Livy, or the Greek grammar? No; 
it was a Novel that you were reading, you 
lazy, not very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible 
boy! It was D'Artagnan locking up General 
Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping 
Charles the First's head on. It was the prisoner 
of the Cbateau d'lf cutting himself out of the 
sack fifty feet under water. (I mention the 
novels I like best myself — novels without love 
or talking, or any of that sort of nonsense, but 
containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, 
and rescuing) — cutting himself out of the sack, 
and swimming to the island of Monte Cristo. 
O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old 
Alexandre! I hereby offer thee homage, and 
give thee thanks for many pleasant hours. I 
45 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen 
hours of a happy day, and had the ladies of 
the house fighting for the volumes. Be assured 
that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go 
so far as to let the reader here pronounce the 
eulogium, or insert the name of his favourite 
author) ; and as for the anger, or, it may be, 
the verberations of his schoolmaster, or the 
remonstrances of his father or the tender plead- 
ings of his mother that he should not let the 
supper grow cold — 1 don't believe the scape- 
grace cared one fig. No! Figs are sweet, but 
fictions are sweeter. 

Have you ever seen a score of white- bearded, 
white-robed warriors, or grave seniors of the 
city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, 
and listening to the story-teller reciting his 
marvels out of " Antar " or the " Arabian 
Nights?" I was once present when a young 
gentleman at table put a tart away from him, 
and said to his neighbour, the Younger Son 
(with rather a fatuous air), "I never eat 
sweets," 

" Not eat sweets ! and do you know why ? " 
says T. 

" Because I am past that kind of thing," says 
the young gentleman. 

" Because you are a glutton and a sot ! " 
cries the Elder (and Juvenis winces a little). 
" All people who have natural, healthy appe- 
tites, love sweets; all children, all women, all 
Eastern people, whose tastes are not corrupted 
46 



Roundabout Papers 

by gluttony and strong drink." And a plateful 
of raspberries and cream disappeared before the 
philosopher. 

You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. 
All people with healthy literary appetites love 
them— almost all women; — a vast number of 
clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most 
learned physicians in England said to me only 
yesterday, " I have just read ^o-and-so for the 
second time" (naming one of Jones's exquisite 
fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathe- 
maticians, are notorious novel-readers; as well 
as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, 
tender mothers. Who has not read about El- 
don, and how he cried over novels every night 
when he was not at whist? 

As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, i 
doubt whether he will like novels when he is 
thirty years of age. He is taking too great a 
glut of them now. He is eating jelly until he 
will be sick. He will know most plots by the 
time he is twenty, so that lie will never be sur- 
prised when the Stranger turns out to be the 
rightful earl, — when the old waterman, throw- 
ing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars 
and the collars of his various orders, and clasp- 
ing Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be 
the prince, her long-lost father. He will recog- 
nize the novelist's same characters, though they 
appear in red- heeled pumps and ailcs-de-viueon, 
or the garb of the nineteenth centur3^ He will 
get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools 
47 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

grow (or used to grow, for I have done grow- 
ing some little time myself, and the practice 
may have ended too) — as private school- boys 
used to grow tired of the pudding before their 
mutton at dinner. 

And pray what is the moral of this apologue ? 
The moral I take to be this: the appetite for 
novels extending to the end of the world; far 
away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading 
them to one another during the endless night; 
—far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn 
sheikhs and elders hearkening to the poet as 
he recites his tales; far away in the Indian 

camps, where the soldiers listen to 's tales, 

or 's, after the hot day's march; far away 

in little Chur yonder, where the lazy boy pores 
over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all 
his eyes;— the demand being what we know it 
is, the merchant must supply it, as he will sup- 
ply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Cal- 
cutta. 

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much 
pale ale, it will disagree with him; and so 
surely, dear youth, will too much of novels cloy 
on thee. I wonder, do novel-writers themselves 
read many novels ? If you go into Gunter's 
you don't see those charming young ladies (to 
whom I present my most respectful compli- 
ments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper 
even-tide they have good plain wholesome tea 
and bread-and-butter. Can anybody tell me 
does the author of the " Tale of Two Cities " 
48 



Jloundabout Papers 

read novels ? does the author of the " Tower of 
London" devour romances? does the dashing 
" Harry Lorrequer " delight in " Plain or Ring- 
lets " or ''Sponge's Sporting Tour?" Does the 
veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the 
books which delighied our young days, " Darn- 
ley," and " Richelieu," and " Delorme," * relish 
the works of Alexandre the Great, and thrill 
over the " Three Musqueteers ? " Does the ac- 
complished author of the " Caxtons " read the 
other tales in Blackwood f (For example, that 
ghost-story printed last August, and which for 
my part, though I read it in the public reading- 
room at the " Pavilion Hotel " at Folkestone, I 
protest frightened me so that I scarce dared 
look over my shoulder.) Does "Uncle Tom" 
admire "Adam Bede; " and does the author 
of the " Vicar of Wrexhill " laugh over the 
" Warden " and the " Three Clerks ? " Dear 
youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous 
pudor ! I make no doubt that the eminent 
parties above named all partake of novels in 
moderation — eat jellies — but mainly nourish 
themselves upon wholesome roast and boiled. 

Here, dear youth aforesaid! our CornMIl 
Magazine owners strive to provide thee with 
facts as well as fiction; and though it does not 
become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least 

* By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the 
veteran novelist ! He was appointed her Majesty's Consul- 
General in Venice, the only city in Europe where the famous 
"Two Cavaliers" cannot by any possibility be seen riding 
together. 

4 49 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

they invite thee to a table where thou shalt 
sit in good company. That story of the " Fox " * 
was written by one of the gallant seamen who 
sought for poor Franklin under the awful Are- 
tic Night : that account of China f is told by 
the man of all the empire most likely to know 
of what he speaks: those pages regarding 
Volunteers ;{: come from an honoured hand that 
has b©rne the sword in a hundred famous fields, 
and pointed the British guns in the greatest 
siege in the world. 

Shall we point out others ? We are fellow- 
travellers, and shall make acquaintance as the 
voyage proceeds. In the Atlantic steamers, on 
the first day out (and on high- and holy-days 
subsequently), the jellies set down on table are 
richly ornamented; medioque in fonte leporum 
rise the American and British flags nobly em- 
blazoned in tin. As the passengers remark this 
pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt im- 
proves the occasion by expressing a hope, to his 
right and left, that the flag of Mr. Bull and his 
younger Brother may always float side by side 
in friendly emulation. Novels having been pre- 
viously compared to jellies — here are two (one 
perhaps not entirely saccharine, and flavoured 
with an amari aliquid very distasteful to some 

* " The Search for Sir John Franklin. (From the Private 
Journal of an OflScer of the ' Fox.') " 

t " The Chinese and the Outer Barbarians."'' By Sir John 
Bowring. 

X " Our Volunteers.'" By Sir John Burgoyne. 
50 



Roundabout Papers 

palates) — two novels* under two flags, the one 
that ancient ensign which has hung before the 
well-known booth of "Vanity Fair;" the other 
that fresh and handsome standard which has 
lately been hoisted on " Barchester Towers."' 
Pray, sir, or madam, to which dish will you be 
helped? 

So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and 
Captain Comstock press their guests to partake 
of the fare on that memorable " First day out," 
when there is no man, I think, who sits down 
but asks a blessing on his voyage, and the good 
ship dips over the bar, and bounds away into 
the blue water. 



THORNS IN THE CUSHION 

In the Essay with which this volume com- 
mences, the Cornhill Magazine was likened to 
a ship sailing forth on her voyage, and the 
captain uttered a very sincere prayer for her 
prosperity. The dangers of storm and rock, the 
vast outlay upon ship and cargo, and the cer- 
tain risk of the venture, gave the chief officer 
a feeling of no small anxiety; for who could 
say from what quarter danger might arise, and 
how his owner's property might be imperilled? 
After a six months' voyage, we with very 
thankful hearts could acknowledge our good 
fortune: and, taking up the apologue in the 
* "Lovel the Widower " and " Framley Parsonage." 
51 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Roundabout manner, we composed a triumphal 
procession in honour of the Magazine, and im- 
agined the Imperator thereof riding in a sub- 
lime car to return thanks in the Temple of 
Victory. Cornhill is accustomed to grandeur 
and greatness, and has witnessed, every ninth of 
November, for I don't know how many cen- 
turies, a prodigious annual pageant, chariot, 
progress, and flourish of trumpetry; and being 
so very near the Mansion House, I am sure the 
reader will understand how the idea of pageant 
and procession came naturally to my mind. The 
imagination easily supplied a gold coach, eight 
cream-coloured horses of your true Pegasus 
breed, huzzaing multitudes, running footmen, 
and clanking knights in armour, a chaplain and 
a sword-bearer with a mull' on his head, scowl- 
ing out of the coach-window, and a Lord Mayor 
all crimson, fur, gold-chain and white ribbons, 
solemnly occupying the place of state. A play- 
ful fancy could have carried the matter farther, 
could have depicted the feast in the Egyptian 
Hall, the Ministers, Chief Justices, and right 
reverend prelates taking their seats round about 
his lordship, the turtle and other delicious vi- 
ands, and JNlr. Toole behind the central throne, 
bawling out to the assembled guests and dig- 
nitaries : " My Lord So-and-so, my Lord What- 
d'ye-call-'im, my Lord Eteaetera, the Lord 
Mayor pledges you all in a lo"^ing-cup." Then 
the noble proceedings come to an end ; Lord 
Simper proposes the ladies; the company rises 
52 



Roundabout Papers 

from table, and adjourns to coffee and muffins. 
The carriages of tlie nobility and guests roil 
back to the West. The Egyptian Hall, so bright 
just now, appears in a twilight glimmer, in 
which waiters are seen ransacking the dessert, 
and rescuing the spoons. His lordship and the 
Lady Mayoress go into their private apart- 
ments. The robes are doffed, the collar and 
white ribbons are removed. The Mayor becomes 
a man, and is pretty surely in a ffuster about 
the speeches which he has just uttered; re- 
membering too well now, wretched creature, the 
principal points which he didn't make when he 
rose to speak. He goes to bed to headache, to 
care, to repentance, and, I dare say, to a dose 
of something Avhich his body-physician has pre- 
scribed for him. And there are ever so many 
men in the city who fancy that man happy ! 

Now, suppose that all through that 9th of 
November his lordship has had a racking rheu- 
matism, or a toothache, let us say, during all 
dinner-time — through which he has been obliged 
to grin and mumble his poor old speeches. Is 
he enviable? Would you like to change with 
his lordship? ^Suppose that bumper which his 
golden footman brings him, instead i'fackins of 
ypocras or canary, contains some abomination 
of senna? Away! Remove the golden goblet, 
insidious cup-bearer! ^^ou now begin to per- 
ceive the gloomy moral which I am about to 
draw. 

Last month we sang the song of glorification, 
53 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

and rode in the chariot of triumph. It was all 
very well. It was right to huzza, and be thank- 
ful, and cry, Bravo, our side! and besides, you 
know, there was the enjoyment of tliinking how 
pleased Brown, and Jones, and Robinson (our 
dear friends) would be at this announcement 
of success. But now that the performance is 
over, my good sir, just step into my private 
room, and see that it is not all pleasure — this 
winning of successes. Cast your eye over those 
newspapers, over those letters. See what the 
critics say of your harmless jokes, neat little 
trim sentences, and pet waggeries ! Why, you 
are no better than an idiot; you are drivelling; 
your powers have left you; this always over- 
rated writer is rapidly sinking to, &c. 

This is not pleasant; but neither is this the 
point. It may be the critic is right, and the 
author wrong. It may be that the archbishop's 
sermon is not so fine as some of those dis- 
courses twenty years ago which used to delight 
the faithful in Granada. Or it may be (pleas- 
ing thought ! ) that the critic is a dullard, and 
does not understand what he is writing about. 
Everybody who has been to an exhibition has 
heard visitors discoursing about the pictures be- 
fore their faces. One says, " This is very well; " 
another says, "This is stuff and rubbish;" 
another cries, "Bravo! this is a masterpiece:" 
and each has a right to his opinion. For ex- 
ample, one of the pictures I admired most at 
the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom 
54 



Roundabout Papers 

I never, to my knowledge, set eyes. This pic- 
ture is No, 346, " Moses," by Mr. S. Solomon. 
I thought it had a great intention, I thought 
it finely drawn and composed. It nobly repre- 
sented, to my mind, the dark children of the 
Egyptian bondage, and suggested the touching 
story. My newspaper says : " Two ludicrously 
ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not 
form a pleasing object; " and so good-by, Mr. 
Solomon. Are not most of our babies served so 
in life? and doesn't Mr. Kobinson consider Mr. 
Brown's cherub an ugly, squalling little brat? 
So cheer up, Mr. S. S. It may be the critic who 
discoursed on your baby is a bad judge of 
babies. When Pharaoh's kind daughter found 
the child, and cherished and loved it, and took 
it home, and found a nurse for it, too, I dare 
say there were grim, brickdust-coloured cham- 
berlains, or some of the tough, old, meagre, 
yellow princesses at court, who never had chil- 
dren themselves, who cried out, " Faugh ! the 
horrid little squalling wretch ! " and knew he 
would never come to good ; and said, " Didn't I 
tell you so?" Avhen he assaulted the Egyptian. 
. Never mind then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, be- 
cause a critic pooh-poohs your work of art — 
your Moses — your child — your foundling. Why, 
did not a wiseacre in Blackwnod s Magazine 
lately fall foul of " Tom Jones ? " hypercritic ! 
So. to be sure, did good old Mr. Richardson, 
who could write novels himself — but you, and 
I, and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree in giving 
55 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

our respect, and wonder, and admiration, to the 
brave old master. 

In these last words I am supposing the re- 
spected reader to be endowed with a sense of 
humour, which he may or may not possess; 
indeed, don't we know many an honest man 
who can no more comprehend a joke than he 
can turn a tune? But I take for granted, my 
dear sir, that you are brimming over with fun — • 
you mayn't make jokes, but you could if you 
would — you know you could: and in your quiet 
way you enjoy them extremely. Now many 
people neither make them, nor understand them 
when made, nor like them when understood, 
and are suspicious, testy, and angry with jokers. 
Have you ever watched an elderly male or fe- 
male — an elderly " party," so to speak, who 
begins to find out that some young wag of the 
company is "chaffing" him? Have you ever 
tried the sarcastic or Socratic method with a 
child? Little simple he or she, in the inno- 
cence of the simple heart, plays some silly freak, 
or makes some absurd remark, which you turn 
to ridicule. The little creature dimly perceives 
that you are making fun of him, writhes, 
blushes, grows uneasy, bursts into tears, — upon 
my word it is not fair to try the weapon of 
ridicule upon that innocent young victim. The 
awful objurgatory practice he is accustomed to. 
Point out his fault, and lay bare the dire con- 
sequences thereof: expose it roundly, and give 
him a proper, solemn, moral whipping — but do 
56 



Roundabout Papers 

not attempt to castigare ridcndo. Do not laugh 
at him writhing, and cause all the other boys 
in the school to laugh. Kemember your own 
young days at school, my friend — the tingling 
cheeks, burning ears, bursting heart, and pas- 
sion of desperate tears, with which you looked 
up, after having performed some blunder, whilst 
the doctor held you to public scorn before the 
class, and cracked his great clumsy jokes upon 
you — helpless, and a prisoner! Better the block 
itself, and the lictors, with their fasces of birch- 
twigs, than the maddening torture of those 
jokes! 

Now, with respect to jokes — and the present 
company of course excepted — many people, per- 
haps most people, are as infants. They have 
little sense of humour. They don't like jokes. 
Eaillery in writing annoys and offends them. 
The coarseness apart, I think I have met very, 
very few women who liked the banter of Swift 
and Fielding. Their simple, tender natures re- 
volt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked 
brute at heart, and are they rightly shocked at 
his grin, his leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears? 
Fi done, le rilain monsirc, with his shrieks, and 
his capering crooked legs! Let him go and get 
a pair of well -wadded black silk stockings, and 
pull them over those horrid shanks; put a large 
gown and bands over beard and hide; and pour 
a dozen of lavender-water into his lawn hand- 
kerchief, and cry, and never make a joke again. 
It shall all be highly-distilled poesy, and per- 
57 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

fumed sentiment, and gushing eloquence; and 
the foot shan't peep out, and a plague take it. 
Cover it up with the surplice. Out with your 
cambric, dear ladies, and let us all whimper 
together. 

Now, then, hand on heart, we declare that 
it is not the fire of adverse critics which afflicts 
or frightens the editorial bosom. They may be 
right; they may be rogues who have a per- 
sonal spite; they may be dullards who kick and 
bray as their nature is to do, and prefer thistles 
to pineapples; they may be conscientious, acute, 
deeply learned, delightful judges, who see your 
joke in a moment, and the profound wisdom 
lying underneath. Wise or dull, laudatory or 
otherwise, we put their opinions aside. If they 
applaud, we are pleased: if they shake their 
quick pens, and fly olT with a hiss, we resign 
their favours and put on all the fortitude we 
can muster. I would rather have the lowest 
man's good word than his bad one, to be sure; 
but as for coaxing a compliment, or wheedling 
him into good-humour, or stopping his angry 
mouth with a good dinner, or accepting his 
contributions for a certain Magazine, for fear 
of his barking or snapping elsewhere — allons 
done! These shall not be our acts. Bow-wow, 
Cerberus! Here shall be no sop for thee, un- 
less — unless Cerberus is an uncommonly good 
dog. when we shall bear no malice because he 
flew at us from our neighbour's gate. 

What, then, is the main grief you spoke of as 
58 



Roundabout Papers 

annoying you — the toothache in the Lord 
Mayor's jaw, the tliorn in the cushion of the 
editorial chair? It is there. Ah! it stings me 
now as I write. It comes with almost every 
morning's post. At night I come home, and 
take my letters up to bed (not daring to open 
them), and in the morning I find one, two, three 
thorns on my pillow. Three I extracted yester- 
day; two I found this morning. They don't 
sting quite so sharply as they did; but a skin 
is a skin, and they bite, after all, most wickedly. 
It is all very fine to advertise on the Magazine, 
" Contributions are only to be sent to Messrs. 
Smith, Elder and Co., and not to the Editor's 
private residence." My dear sir, how little you 
know man- or woman-kind, if you fancy they 
will take that sort of warning! How am I to 
know, (though, to be sure, I begin to know 
now,) as I take the letters off the tray, which 
of those envelopes contains a real bond fide 
letter, and which a thorn? One of the best in- 
vitations this year I mistook for a thorn-letter, 
and kept it without opening. This is what I 
call a thorn-letter: — 

" Camberwell, June 4. 
" Sir, — May I hope, may I entreat, that you will 
favour me by perusing the enclosed lines, and that 
they may be found worthy of insertion in the Corn- 
hill Hagazine ? We have known better days, sir. I 
have a sick and Avidowed mother to maintain, and 
little brothers and sisters who look to me. I do my 
utmost as a governess to support them. I toil at 
59 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

night when they are at rest, and my own hand and 
brain are alilie tired. If I could add but a Utile to 
our means by my pen, many of my poor invalid's 
wants might be supplied, and I could procure for 
her comforts to which she is now a stranger. Heaven 
knows it is not for want of will or for want of energy 
on my part, that she is now in ill-health, and our 
little household almost without bread. Do — do cast 
a kind glance over my poem, and if you can help us, 
the widow, the orphans will bless you ! I remain, 
sir, in anxious expectancy, 

" Your faithful servant, 

"S. S. S." 

And enclosed is a little poem or two, and an 
envelope with its penny stamp — heaven help us I 
— and the writer's name and address. 

Now you see what I mean by a thorn. Here 
is the case put with true female logic. " I am 
poor; I am good; I am ill; I work hard; I have 
a sick mother and hungry brothers and sisters 
dependent on me. You can help us if you will." 
And then I look at the paper, with the thou- 
sandth part of a faint hope that it may be 
suitable, and I find it won't do: and I knew it 
wouldn't do: and why is this poor lady to 
appeal to my pity and bring her poor little 
ones kneeling to my bedside, and calling for 
bread which I can give them if I choose ? No 
day passes but that argument ad miser icordiam 
is used. Day and night that sad voice is crying 
out for help. Thrice it appealed to me yester- 
day. Twice this morning it cried to me: and 
I have no doubt when I go to get my hat, I 
60 



Roundabout Papers 

shall find it with its piteous face and its pale 
family about it, waiting for me in the hall. 
One of the immense advantages which women 
have over our sex is, that they actually like 
to read these letters. Like letters? O mercy 
on us! Before I was an editor I did not like 
the postman much: — but now! 

A very common way with these petitioners 
is to begin with a tine flummery about the 
merits and eminent genius of the person whom 
they are addressing. But this artifice, I state 
publicly, is of no avail. When 1 see that kind 
of herb, I know the snake within it, and tiing 
it away before it has time to sting. Away, 
reptile, to the waste-paper basket, and thence 
to the flames! 

But of these disappointed people, some take 
their disappointment and meekly bear it. Some 
hate and hold you their enemy because you 
could not be their friend. Some, furious and 
envious, say: "Who is this man who refuses 
what I offer, and how dares he, the conceited 
coxcomb, to deny my merit ? " 

Sometimes my letters contain not mere 
thorns, but bludgeons. Here are two choice 
slips from that noble Irish oak, which has more 
than once supplied alpeens for this meek and 
unoffending skull: — 

" Theatre Royal, Donntbrook. 
" Sir, — I have just finished reading the first por- 
tion of your Tale, Lovel the Widower, and am much 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

surprised at the unwarrantable strictures you pass 
therein on the corps de ballet. 

"I have been for more than ten years connected 
with the theatrical profession, and I beg to assure 
you that the majority of the coiys de ballet are vir- 
tuous, well-conducted girls, and, consequently, that 
snug cottages are not taken for them in the Regent's 
Park. 

" I also have to inform you that theatrical man- 
agers are in the habit of speaking good English, 
possibly better English than authors. 

" You either know nothing of the subject in ques- 
tion, or you assert a v>^ilful falsehood. 

" I am happy to say that the characters of the 
corps de ballet, as also those of actors and actresses, 
are superior to the snarlings of dyspeptic libellers, or 
the spiteful attacks and brntumfulmen of ephemeral 
authors. 

" I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

"A. B. C. 

" The Editor of the Corn?dll Ilagazine.''^ 

"Theatre Royal, Donnybrook. 

"Sir, — I have just read, in the CornJiill Magazine 
for January, the first portion of a Tale written by 
you, and entitled Lovel the Widower. 

" In the production in question you employ all 
your malicious spite (and you have great capabili- 
ties that way) in trying to degrade the character of 
the corps de ballet. When you imply that the major- 
ity of ballet-girls have villas taken for them in the 
Regent's Park, I say yotc tell a deliberate falsehood. 

" Haveing been brought up to the stage from in- 
fancy, and, though now an actress, haveing been 
seven years principal dancer at the opera, I am com- 
petent to speak on the subject. I am only surprised 
62 4 



Roundabout Papers 

that so vile a libeller as yourself should be allowed 
to preside at the Dramatic Fund dinner on the 22nd 
instant. I think it would be much better if you 
were to reform your own life, instead of telling lies 
of those who are immeasurably your superiors. 
" Yours in supreme disgust, 

"A. D." 

The signatures of the respected writers are 
altered, and for the site of their Theatre Koyal 
an adjacent place is named, which (as I may 
have been falsely informed) used to be famous 
for quarrels, thumps, and broken heads. But, 
I say, is this an easy chair to sit on, when you 
are liable to have a pair of such shillelaghs 
flung at it? And, prithee, what was all the 
quarrel about? In the little history of " Lovei 
the Widower " I described, and brought to con- 
dign punishment, a certain wretch of a ballet- 
dancer, who lived splendidly for a while on ill- 
gotten gains, had an accident, and lost her 
beauty, and died poor, deserted, ugly, and every 
way odious. In the same page, other little 
ballet-dancers are described, wearing homely 
clothing, doing their duty, and carrying their 
humble savings to the family at home. But 
nothing will content my dear correspondents 
but to have me declare that the majority of 
ballet-dancers have villas in the Regent's Park, 
and to convict me of " deliberate falsehood." 
Suppose, for instance, I had chosen to introduce 
a red-haired washerwoman into a story? I 
might get an expostulatory letter saying, " Sir, 
63 



Wiiiiam Makepeace Thackeray 

in stating that the majority of washerwomen 
are red-haired, you are a liar! and you had 
best not speak of ladies who are immeasurably 
your superiors." Or suppose 1 had ventured to 
describe an illiterate haberdasher? One of the 
craft might write to me, " Sir, in describing 
haberdashers as illiterate, you utter a wilful 
falsehood. Haberdashers use much better 
English than authors.'' It is a mistake, to be 
sure. I have never said what my correspond- 
ents say I say. There is the text under their 
noses, but what if they choose to read it their 
own way ? " Hurroo, lads ! Here's for a fight. 
There's a bald head peeping out of the hut. 
There's a bald head 1 It must be Tim Malone's." 
And whack! come down both the bludgeons at 
once. 

Ah me! we wound where we never intended 
to strike; we create anger where we never 
meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns 
in our Cushion. Out of mere malignity, I sup- 
pose, there is no man who would like to make 
enemies. But here, in this editorial business, 
you can't do otherwise: and a queer, sad, 
strange, bitter thought it is, that must cross 
the mind of many a public man : " Do what I 
will, be innocent or spiteful, be generous or 
cruel, there are A and B, and C and D, who 
will hate me to the end of the chapter — to the 
chapter's end — to the Finis of the page — when 
hate, and envy, and fortune, and disappoint- > 
ment shall be over." 

64 



Roundabout Papers 



DE JUVENTUTE 

Our last paper of this veracious and round- 
about series related to a period which can only 
be historical to a great number of readers of 
this Magazine, Four I saw at the station to- 
day with orange-covered books in their hands, 
who can but have known George IV. by books, 
and statues, and pictures. Elderly gentlemen 
were in their prime, old men in their middle 
age, when he reigned over us. His image re- 
mains on coins; on a picture or two hanging 
here and there in a Club or old-fashioned din- 
ing-room; on horseback, as at Trafalgar Square, 
for example, where I defy any monarch to look 
more uncomfortable. He turns up in sundry 
memoirs and histories which have been pub- 
lished of late days; in Mr. Massey's "History; " 
in the " Buckingham and Grenville Corre- 
spondence; " and gentlemen who have accused 
a certain writer of disloyalty are referred to 
those volumes to see whether the picture drawn 
of George is overcharged. Charon has paddled 
him off; he has mingled with the crowded re- 
public of the dead. His effigy smiles from a 
canvas or two. Breechless he bestrides his 
steed in Trafalgar Square. I believe he still 
wears his robes at Madame Tussaud's (Madame 
herself having quitted Baker Street and life, 
and found him she modelled t'other side the 
Stygian stream). On the head of a five-shilling 
5 Go 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

piece we still occasionally come upon liim, with 
!St. George, the dragon-slayer, on the other side 
of the coin. Ah me ! did this George slay many 
dragons? Was he a brave, heroic champion, 
and rescuer of virgins ? Well ! well ! have you 
and I overcome all the dragons that assail us? 
come alive and victorious out of all the caverns 
which we have entered in life, and succoured, 
at risk of life and limb, all poor distressed per- 
sons in whose naked limbs the dragon Poverty 
is about to fasten his fangs, whom the dragon 
Crime is poisoning with his horrible breath, 
and about to crunch up and devour? O my 
royal liege! my gracious prince and war- 
rior! You a champion to fight that monster? 
Your feeble spear ever pierce that slimy paunch 
or plated back? See how the flames come 
gurgling out of his red-hot brazen throat! 
What a roar! Nearer and nearer he trails, 
with eyes flaming like the lamps of a railroad 
engine. How he squeals, rushing out through 
the darkness of his tunnel. Now he is near. 
Now he is liere. And now — -what? — lance, 
shield, knight, feathers, horse and all? hor- 
ror, horror! Next day, round the monster's 
cave, there lie a few bones more. You, who 
wish to keep yours in your skins, be thankful 
that you are not called upon to go out and 
fight dragons. Be grateful that they don't 
sally out and swallow you. Keep a wise dis- 
tance from their caves, lest you pay too dearly 
for approaching them. Remember that years 
60 



Roundabout Papers 

passed, and whole districts were ravaged, be- 
fore the warrior came who was able to cope 
with the devouring monster. When that knight 
does make his appearance, with all my heart 
let us go out and welcome him with our best 
songs, huzzas, and laurel wreaths, and eagerly 
recognize his valour and victory. But he comes 
only seldom. Countless knights were slain be- 
fore St. George won the battle. In the battle 
of life are we all going to try for the honours 
of championship? If we can do our duty, if 
we can keep our place pretty honourably 
through the combat, let us say, Laus Deo ! at 
the end of it, as the firing ceases, and the night 
falls over the field. 

The old were middle-aged, the elderly were 
in their prime, then, thirty years since, when 
yon royal George was still fighting the dragon. 
As for you, my pretty lass, with your saucy 
hat and golden tresses tumbled in your net, 
and you, my spruce young gentleman in your 
mandarin's cap (the young folks at the country- 
place where I am staying are so attired), your 
parents were unknown to each other, and wore 
short frocks and short jackets, at the date of 
this five-shilling piece. Only today I met a 
dog-cart crammed with children — children with 
moustaches and mandarin caps — children with 
saucy hats and hair-nets — children in short 
frocks and knickerbockers (surely the prettiest 
boy's dress that has appeared these hundred 
years) — children from twenty years of age to 
67 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

six; and father, with mother by his side, driv- 
ing in front — and on father's countenance I saw 
that very laugh which I remember perfectly in 
the time when this crown-piece was coined — in 
his time, in King George's time, when we were 
schoolboys seated on the same form. The smile 
was just as broad, as bright, as jolly, as I re- 
member it in the past — unforgotten, though not 
seen or thought of, for how many decades of 
years, and quite and instantly familiar, though 
so long out of sight. 

Any contemporary of that coin who takes it 
up and reads the inscription round the laurelled 
head, " Georgius IV. Britanniarum Rex. Fid. 
Def. 1823," if he will but look steadily enough 
at the round, and utter the proper incantation, 
I dare saj^ may conjure back his life there. 
Look well, my elderly friend, and tell me what 
you see? First, I see a Sultan, with hair, beau- 
tiful hair, and a crown of laurels round his 
head, and his name is Georgius Rex. Fid. Def., 
and so on. Now the Sultan has disappeared; 
and what is that I see? A boy, — a boy in a 
jacket. He is at a desk; he has great books 
before him, Latin and Greek books and diction- 
aries. Yes, but behind the great books, which 
he pretends to read, is a little one, with pic- 
tures, which he is really reading. It is — yes, I 
can read now — it is the " Heart of Midlothian," 
by the author of " Waverley " — or, no, it is 
" Life in London, or the Adventures of Corin- 
thian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, and their 



Roundabout Papers 

friend Bob Logic," by Pierre Egan; and it has 
pictures — oh! such funny pictures! As he 
reads, there comes behind the boy, a man, a 
dervish, in a black gown, like a woman, and a 
black square cap, and he has a book in each 
hand, and he seizes the boy who is reading the 
picture-book, and lays his head upon one of his 
books, and smacks it with the other. The boy 
makes faces, and so that picture disappears. 

Now the boy has grown bigger. He has got 
on a black gown and cap, something like the 
dervish's. He is at a table, with ever so many 
bottles on it, and fruit, and tobacco; and other 
young dervishes come in. They seem as if they 
were singing. To them enters an old moollahj 
he takes down their names, and orders them all 
to go to bed. What is this? a carriage, with 
four beautiful horses all galloping — a man in 
red is blowing a trumpet. Many young men 
are on the carriage — one of them is driving the 

horses. Surely they won't drive into that? ■ 

ah! they have all disappeared. And now I see 
one of the young men alone. He is walking in 
a street— a dark street — presently a light comes 
to a window. There is the shadow of a lady 
who passes. He stands there till the light goes 
out. Now he is in a room scribbling on a piece 
of paper, and kissing a miniature every now 
and then. They seem to be lines each pretty 
much of a length. I can read heart, smart, 
dart; Mary, fairy; Cupid, stupid; true, you; 
and never mind what more. Bah! it is bosh. 
69 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Now see, he has got a gown on again, and a 
wig of white hair on his head, and he is sitting 
with other dervishes in a great room full ol 
them, and on a throne in the middle is an old 
Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a desk, and he 
wears a wig too — and the young man gets up 
and speaks to him. And now what is here? 
He is in a room with ever so many children, 
and the miniature hanging up. Can it be a 
likeness of that woman who is sitting before 
that copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, 
from which she is pouring hot liquor into cups? 
Was she ever a fairy? She is as fat as a hip- 
popotamus now. He is sitting on a divan by 
the fire. He has a paper on his knees. Read 
the name of the paper. It is the " Superfine 
Review." It inclines to think that Mr. Dickens 
is not a true gentleman, that Mr. Thackeray is 
not a true gentleman, and that when the one 
is pert and the other is arch, we, the gentlemen 
of the " Superfine Review," think, and think, 
rightly, that we have some cause to be indig- 
nant. The great cause why modern humour 
and modern sentimentalism repel us, is that 
they are unwarrantably familiar. Now, Mr. 
Sterne, the " Superfine Reviewer " thinks, " was 
a true sentimentalist, because he was above all 
tilings a true gentleman." The flattering in- 
ference is obvious: let us be thankful for hav- 
ing an elegant moralist watching over us, and 
learn, if not too old, to imitate his high-bred 
politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace. If 
70 



Roundabout Papers 

we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who 
is not. If we repel by pertness, we know who 
never does. If our language oti'ends, we know 
whose is always modest. O pity! The vision 
has disappeared off the silver, the images of 
youth and the past are vanishing away! We 
who have lived before railways were made, be- 
long to another world. In how many hours 
could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton 
to London, with a light carriage built ex- 
pressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop 
the next stage? Do you remember Sir Some- 
body, the coachman of the Age, who took our 
half-crown so affably? It was only yesterday; 
but what a gulf between now and then! Then 
was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less 
swift, riding- horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, 
knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman 
legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, 
and so forth — all these belong to the old period. 
I will concede a halt in the midst of it, and 
allow that gunpowder and printing tended to 
modernize the Avorld. But your railroad starts 
the new era, and we of a certain age belong to 
the new time and the old one. We are of the 
time of chivalry as well as the Black Prince or 
Sir Walter Manny. We are of the age of steam, 
We have stepped out of the old world on to 
" Brunei's " vast deck, and across the waters 
ingens patet telhis. Towards what new con- 
tinent are we wending? to what new laws, new 
manners, new politics, vast new expanses of 
71 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

liberties unknown as yet, or only surmised? I 
used to know a man who had invented a flying- 
machine. " Sir/' he would say, " give me but 
five hundred pounds, and I will make it. It 
is so simple of construction that 1 tremble daily 
iest some other person should light upon and 
patent my discovery." Perhaps faith was w^ant- 
ing; perhaps the five hundred pounds. He is 
dead, and somebody else must make the flying- 
machine. But that will only be a step forward 
on the journey already begun since we quitted 
the old world. There it lies on the other side 
of yonder embankments. You young folks have 
never seen it; and Waterloo is to you no more 
than Agincourt, and George IV. than Sardan- 
apalus. We elderly people have lived in that 
pra3-railroad world, w^hich has passed into limbo 
and vanished from under us. I tell you it was 
firm under our feet once^ and not long ago. 
They have raised those railroad embankments 
up, and shut off the old world that was behind 
them. Climb up that bank on which the irons 
are laid, and look to the other side — it is gone. 
There is no other side. Try and catch yester- 
day. Where is it? Here is a "Times" news- 
paper, dated Monday 26th, and this is Tuesday 
27th. Suppose you deny there was such a day 
as yesterday? 

We who lived before railways, and survive 
out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah 
and his family out of the Ark. The children 
will gather round and sa}^ to us patriarchs, 



Roundabout Papers 

" Tell us, grandpapa, about the old world." 
And we shall mumble our old stories; and we 
shall drop off one by one; and there will be 
fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and 
feeble. There will be but ten prairailroadites 
left: then three — then two — then one — then 0! 
If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility 
(of which I cannot trace any signs either in 
his hide or his face), I think he would go down 
to the bottom of his tank, and never come up 
again. Does he not see that he belongs to by- 
gone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of 
a body is out of place in these times? What 
has he in common with the brisk young life 
surrounding him? In the watches of the night, 
when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are 
on one leg, when even the little armadillo is 
quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their chat- 
ter, — he, I mean the hippopotamus, and the 
elephant, and the long-necked giraffe, perhaps 
may lay their heads together and have a col- 
loquy about the great silent antediluvian world 
which they remember, where mighty monsters 
floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked 
on the banks, and dragons darted out of the 
caves and waters before men were made to slay 
them. We who lived before railways are ante- 
diluvians — we must pass away. We are grow- 
ing scarcer every day; and old — old — very old 
/elicts of the times when George was still fight- 
ing the Dragon. 

Not long since, a company of horse-riders 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

paid a visit to our watering-place. We went 
to see them, and 1 betiiought me that young 
Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might 
like also to witness the performance. A panto- 
mime is not always amusing to persons who 
have attained a certain age; but a boy at a 
pantomime is always amused and amusing, and 
to see his pleasure is good for most hypo- 
chondriacs. 

We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that 
he might join us, and the kind lady replied that 
the boy had already been at the morning per- 
formance of the equestrians, but was most eager 
to go in the evening likewise. And go he did; 
and laughed at all Mr. Merryman's remarks, 
though he remembered them with remarkable 
accuracy, and insisted upon waiting to the very 
end of the fun, and was only induced to retire 
just before its conclusion by representations 
that the ladies of the party would be incom- 
moded if they were to wait and undergo the rush 
and trample of the crowd round about. When 
this fact was pointed out to him, he yielded at 
once, though with a heavy heart, his eyes look- 
ing longingly towards the ring as we retreated 
out of the booth. We were scarcely clear of 
the place, when we heard " God save the 
Queen," played by the equestrian band, the sig- 
nal that all was over. Our companion enter- 
tained us with scraps of the dialogue on our 
way home — precious crumbs of wit which he 
had brought away from that feast. He laughed 
74 



Roundabout Papers 

over them again as we walked under the stars. 
He has them now, and takes them out of the 
pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and 
relishes it with a sentimental tenderness, too, 
for he is, no doubt, back at school by this time; 
the holidays are over; and Doctor Birch's young 
friends have reassembled. 

Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple 
mouths to grin! As the jaded Merryman ut- 
tered them to the old gentleman with the whip, 
some of the old folks in the audience, I dare 
say, indulged in reflections of their own. There 
was one joke — 1 utterly forget it — but it began 
with Merryman saying what he had for dinner. 
He had mutton for dinner, at one o'clock, after 
which " he had to come to business." And then 
€ame the point. Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. 
Doctor Birch's, Market Rodborough, if you read 
this, will you please send me a line, and let me 
know what was the joke Mr. Merryman made 
about having his dinner? You remember well 
enough. But I do want to know? Suppose a 
boy takes a favourite, long-cherished lump of 
cake out of his pocket, and offers you a bite? 
Merci! The fact is, I donH care much about 
knowing that joke of Mr, Merryman's. 

But whilst he v^as talking about his dinner, 
and his mutton, and his landlord, and his busi- 
ness, I felt a great interest about Mr. M. in 
private life — about his wife, lodgings, earnings, 
and general history, and I dare say was forming 
a picture of those in my mind: — wife cooking 
75 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

the mutton; children waiting for it; Merryman 
in his plain clothes, and so forth; during which 
contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed 
at, and Mr. M., resuming his professional duties, 
was tumbling over head and heels. Do not sup- 
pose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in 
moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and 
mountebanking. Nay, Prime Ministers re- 
hearse their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare 
and polish them; tabernacle preachers must 
arrange them in their minds before they utter 
them. All I mean is, that I would like to know 
any one of these performers thoroughly, and 
out of his uniform: that preacher, and why in 
his travels this and that point struck him; 
wherein lies his power of pathos, humour, elo- 
quence; — that Minister of State, and what 
moves him, and how his private heart is work- 
ing;- — I would only say that, at a certain time 
of life, certain things cease to interest: but 
about some things when we cease to care, what 
will be the use of life, sight, hearing? Poems 
are written, and we cease to admire. Lady 
Jones invites us, and we yawn; she ceases to 
invite us, and we are resigned. The last time 
I saw a ballet at the opera — oh! it is many 
years ago — I fell asleep in the stalls, wagging 
my head in insane dreams, and I hope afford- 
ing amusement to the company, while the feet 
of five hundred nymphs were cutting flicfiacs on 
the stage at a few paces' distance. Ah, I re- 
member a different state of things! Credite 
76 



Roundabout Papers 

posteri. To see those nymphs — gracious pow- 
ers, how beautiful they were! That leering, 
painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled 
old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming thump- 
ing down on her board out of time — tJiat an 
opera-dancer? Pooh! My dear Walter, the 
great dilierence between my time and yours, 
who will enter life some two or three years 
hence, is that, now, the dancing women and 
singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, 
and out of tune; the paint is so visible, and 
the dinge and wrinkles of their wretched old 
cotton stockings, that I am surprised how any 
body can like to look at them. And as for 
laughing at me for falling asleep, I can't under- 
stand a man of sense doing otherwise. In mp 
time, a la honne hciire. In the reign of George 
IV., I give you my honour, all the dancers at 
the opera were as beautiful as Houris. Even 
in William IV.'s time, when I think of Duver- 
nay prancing in as the Bayadere, — I say it was 
a vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can't 
see now-a-days. How well I remember the tune 
to which she used to appear! Kaled used to 
say to the Sultan, " My lord, a troOp of those 
dancing and singing gurls called Bayaderes ap- 
proaches," and, to the clash of cymbals, and 
the thumping of my heart, in she used to 
dance! There has never been anything like it 
— never. There never will be — I laugh to scorn 
old people who tell me about your Noblet, your 
Montessu, your Vestris, your Parisot — pshaw, 
^7 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

the senile twaddlers! And the impudence of 
the young men^ with their music and their 
dancers of to-day! 1 tell you the women are 
dreary old creatures. 1 tell you one air in an 
opera is just like another, and they send all 
rational creatures to sleep. Ah, Ronzi de Beg- 
nis, thou lovely one! Ah, Caradori, thou smil- 
ing angel! Ah, Malibran! Nay, I will come 
to modern times, and acknowledge that La- 
blache was a very good singer thirty years ago 
(though Porto was the boy for me) : and then 
we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, 
a rising young singer. 

But what is most certain and lamentable is 
the decay of stage beauty since the days of 
George IV. Think of Sontag! I remember 
her in Otello and the Donna del Lago in '28. 
I remember being behind the scenes at the 
opera (where numbers of us young fellows of 
fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her 
hair fall do-^n over her shoulders previous to 
her murder )y Donzelli. Young fellows have 
never seen beauty like that, heard such a voice, 
seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell me! A 
man who has been about town since the reign 
of George IV., ought he not to know better 
than you young lads who have seen nothing? 
The deterioration of women is lamentable; and 
the conceit of the young fellows more lamen- 
table still, that they won't see this fact, but per- 
sist in thinking their time as good as ours. 

Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was 
78 



Roundabout Papers 

covered with angels, who sang, acted, and 
danced. When I remember the Adelphi and 
the actresses there: when I think of Miss 
Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle at 
Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious pupils— 
of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite 
young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a 
host more! One much-admired being of those 
days I confess I never cared for, and that was 
the chief male dancer — a very important per- 
sonage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a 
tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to 
divide the applause with the ladies, and who 
has now sunk down a trap-door for ever. And 
this frank admission ought to show that 1 am 
not your mere twaddling laudator temporis 
acti — your old fogey who can see no good ex- 
cept in his own time. 

They say that claret is better now-a-days, and 
cookery much improved since the days of my 
monarch — of George IV. Pastry Cookery is 
certainly not so good. I have often eaten 
half-a-crown's worth (including, I trust, 
ginger-beer) at our school pastrycook's^ and 
that is a proof that the pastry must have been 
very good, for could I do as much now? I 
passed by the pastrycook's shop lately, having 
occasion to visit my old school. It looked a 
very dingy old baker's; misfortunes may have 
come over him — those penny tarts certainly did 
not look so nice as I remember them: but he 
may have grown careless as he has grown old 
T9 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

(1 should, judge him to be now about ninety- 
six years of age), and. his hand, may have lost 
its cunning. 

Not that we were not great epicures. I re- 
member how we constantly grumbled at the 
quantity of the food in our master's house — 
which on my conscience I believe was excellent 
and plentiful — and how we tried once or twice 
to eat him out of house and home. At the 
pastrycook's we may have over-eaten ourselves 
(1 have admitted half-a-crown's worth for my 
own part, but i don't like to mention the real 
figure for fear of i:)erverting the present genera- 
tion of boys by my monstrous confession) — 
we may have eaten too much, 1 say. We did; 
but what then? The school apothecary was 
sent for: a couple of small globules at night, 
a trilling preparation of senna in the morning, 
and we had not to go to school, so that the 
draught was an actual pleasure. 

For our amusements, besides the games in 
vogue, which were pretty much in old timea 
as they are now (except cricket, par exemple 
— and I wish the present youth joy of their 
bowling, and suppose Armstrong and Whit- 
worth will bowl at them wuth light field-pieces 
next), there were novels — ah! I trouble you to 
find such novels in the present day ! O Scottish 
Chiefs, didn't we weep over you! O Mysteries 
of Udolpho, didn't 1 and Briggs Minor draw 
pictures out- of you, as I have said ? Efforts, 
feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us 
80 



Roundabout Papers 

and our friends. " 1 say, old boy, draw us Vi- 
valdi tortured in the Inquisition," or " Draw 
us Don Quixote and the windmills, you know,'* 
amateurs would say, to boys who had a love 
of drawing. " Peregrine Pickle " we liked, our 
fathers admiring it, and telling us (the sly old 
boys) it was capital fun; but I think I was 
rather bewildered by it, though " Roderick 
Random " was and remains delightful. 1 don't 
remember having fSterne in the school library, 
no doubt because the works of that divine were 
not considered decent for young people. Ah! 
not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby 
and Trim, would I say a word in disrespect. 
But I am thankful to live in times when men 
no longer have the temptation to write so as to 
call blushes on women's cheeks, and would 
shame to whisper wicked allusions to honest 
boys. Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, 
the kindly, the generous, the pure — the com- 
panion of what countless delightful hours; the 
purveyor of how much happiness; the friend 
whom we recall as the constant benefactor of 
our youth! How^ well I remember the type 
and the brownish paper of the old duodecimo 
" Tales of My Landlord ! " I have never dared 
to read the " Pirate," and the " Bride of Lam- 
mermoor," or " Kenil worth," from that day to 
this, because the finale is unhappy, and people 
die, and are murdered at the end. But " Ivan- 
hoe," and " Quentin Durward ! " Oh ! for a 
half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of 
6 81 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

tliose books again! Those books, and perhaps 
those eyes with which we read them; and, it 
may be, the brains behind the eyes! It may 
be the tart was good; but how fresh the appe- 
tite was! If the gods would give me the desire 
of my heart, I should be able to write a story 
which boys would relish for the next few dozen 
of centuries. The boy-critic loves the story: 
grown up, he loves the author who wrote the 
story. Hence the kindly tie is established be- 
tween writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly 
for life. I meet people now who don't care for 
Walter Scott, or the " Arabian Nights; " I am 
sorry for them, unless they in their time have 
found tJieir romancer — their charming Sche- 
herazade. By the way, Walter, when you are 
writing, tell me who is the favourite novelist 
in the fourth form now? Have you got any- 
thing so good and kindly as dear Miss Edge- 
worth's Frank? It used to belong to a fellow's 
Bisters generally; but though he pretended to 
despise it, and said, " Oh, stuff for girls ! " he 
read it; and I think there were one or two pas- 
sages which would try my eyes now, were I to 
meet with the little book. 

As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my 
witty w^ay of calling Tom and Jerry), I went 
to the British Museum the other day on pur- 
pose to get it; but somehow, if you will press 
the question so closely, on reperusal, Tom and 
Jerry is not so brilliant as I had supposed it 
to be. The pictures are just as fine as ever; 
82 



Roundabout Papers 

and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry 
Hawthorn ana Corinthian Tom with delight, 
after many years' absence. But the style oi 
the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me; \ 
even thought it a little vulgar — well! well! 
other w^'iters have been considered vulgar — and, 
as a description of the sports and amusements 
of London in the ancient times, more curious 
than amusing. 

But the pictures! — oh! the pictures are noble 
still! First, there is Jerry arriving from the 
country, in a green coat and leather gaiters, 
and being measured for a fashionable suit at 
Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. 
Then away for the career of pleasure and 
fashion. The park! delicious excitement! The 
theatre ! the saloon ! ! the green-room ! ! ! Rap- 
turous bliss — the opera itself! and then perhaps 
to Temple Bar, to knock doivn a Charley there! 
There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights and 
little cocked hats, coming from the opera — very 
much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are 
habited now. There they are at Almack's it- 
self, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, 
with the Duke of Clarence himself looking at 
them dancing. Now, strange change, they are 
in Tom Cribb's parlour, where they don't seem 
to be a whit less at home than in fashion's 
gilded halls: and now they are at Newgate, 
seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' 
legs previous to execution. What hardened 
ferocity in the countenance of the desperado 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

in yellow breeches. What compunction in the 
face of the gentleman in black (who, 1 suppose, 
has been forging), and who clasps his hands, 
and listens to the chaplain! Now we haste 
away to merrier scenes: to Tattersall's (ah 
gracious powers! what a funny fellow that 
actor was who performed Dicky Green in that 
scene at the play ! ) ; and now we are at a pri- 
vate party, at which Corinthian Tom is waltz- 
ing (and very gracefully, too, as you must con- 
fess,) with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, 
the Oxonian, is playing on the piano! 

" After," the text says, " the Oxonian had 
played several pieces of lively music, he re- 
quested as a favour that Kate and his friend 
Tom would perform a waltz. Kate without 
any hesitation immediately stood up. Tom 
offered his hand to his fascinating partner, 
and the dance took place. The plate conveys 
a correct representation of the ' gay scene ' at 
that precise moment. The anxiety of the 
Oxonian to witness the attitudes of the elegant 
pair had nearly put a stop to their movements. 
On turning round from the pianoforte and pre- 
senting his comical mug, Kate could scarcely 
suppress a laugh." 

And no wonder; just look at it now (as I 
have copied it to the best of my humble abil- 
ity), and compare Master Logic's countenance 
and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom! 
Now every London man is weary and blase. 
There is an enjoyment of life in these young 
84 



Roundabout Papers 

bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with 
our feelings of 18G0. Here, for instance, is a 
specimen of their talk and walk. " ' If,' says 
Logic — 'if enjoyment is your motto, you may 
make the most of an evening at Vauxhall, more 
than at any other place in the metropolis. It 
is all free and easy. Stay as long as you like, 
and depart when you think proper.' — ' Your 
description is so flattering,' replied Jerry, 
' that 1 do not care how soon the time arrives 
for us to start.' Logic proposed a ' hit of a 
stroll ' in order to get rid of an hour or two, 
which was immediately accepted by Tom and 
Jerry. A turn or two in Bond Street, a stroll 
through Piccadilly, a loolc in at Tattersall's, 
a ramble through Pall Mall, and a strut on the 
Corinthian path, fully occupied the time of our 
heroes until the hour for dinner arrived, when 
a few glasses of Tom's rich wines soon put 
them on the qui vive. Yauxhall was then the 
object in view, and the Trio started, bent upon 
enjoying the pleasures which this place so 
amply affords." 

How nobly those inverted commas, those 
italics, those capitals, bring out the writer's 
wit and relieve the eye! They are as good as 
jokes, though you mayn't quite perceive the 
point. Mark the varieties of lounge in which 
the young men indulge — now a stroll, then a 
look in, then a ramMe, and presently a strut. 
When George, Prince of \Yales, was twentv, I 
have read in an old Magazine, " the Prince's 
85 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

lounge " was ^a peculiar manner of walking 
which the young bucks imitated. At Windsor 
George 111. had a cat's path — a sly early walk 
which the good old king took in the gray morn- 
ing before his household was astir. What was 
the Corinthian path here recorded? Does any 
antiquary know? And what were the rich 
wines which our friends took, and which en- 
abled them to enjoy Vauxhall? Vauxhall is 
gone, but the wines which could occasion such 
a delightful perversion of the intellect as to 
enable it to enjoy ample pleasures there, what 
were they? 

So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry 
Hawthorn, the rustic, is fairly knocked up by 
all this excitement and is forced to go home, 
and the last picture represents him getting 
into the coach at the " White Horse Cellar," 
he being one of six inside; whilst his friends 
shake him by the hand; whilst the sailor 
mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang 
round with oranges, knives, and sealing-wax: 
whilst the guard is closing the door. Where 
are they now, those sealing-wax vendors? where 
are the guards? where are the jolly teams? 
where are the coaches? and where the youth 
that climbed inside and out of them; that 
heard the merry horn which sounds no more; 
that saw the sun rise over Stonehenge; that 
rubbed away the bitter tears at night after 
parting as the coach sped on the journey to 
school and London; that looked out with beat- 



Roundabout Papers 

ing heart as the milestones flew by, for the 
welcome corner where began home and holi- 
days? 

It is night now: and here is home. Gathered 
under the quiet roof elders and children lie 
alike at rest. In the midst of a great peace 
and calm, the stars look out from the heavens. 
The silence is peopled with the past; sorrowful 
remorses for sins and shortcomings — memories 
of passionate joys and griefs rise out of their 
graves, both now alike calm and sad. Eyes, 
as I shut mine, look at me, that have long 
ceased to shine. The town and the fair land- 
scape sleep under the starlight, wreathed in the 
autumn mists. Twinkling among the houses a 
light keeps watch here and there, in what may 
be a sick chamber or two. The clock tolls 
sweetly in the silent air. Here is night and 
rest. An awful sense of thanks makes the 
heart swell, and the head bow, as I pass to my 
room through the sleeping house, and feel as 
though a hushed blessing were upon it. 



ON A JOKE I ONCE HEAED FROM THE 
LATE THOMAS HOOD 

The good-natured reader who has perused 
some of these rambling papers has long since 
seen (if to see has been worth his trouble) that 
the writer belongs to the old-fashioned classes 
of this world, loves to remember very much 
87 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

more than to prophesy, and though he can't 
help being carried onward, and downward, per- 
haps, on the hill of life, the swift milestones 
marking their forties, fifties, — how many tens or 
lustres shall we say? — he sits under Time, the 
white-wigged charioteer, with his back to the 
horses, and his face to the past, looking at 
the receding landscape and the hills fading into 
the gray distance. Ah me! those gray, distant 
hills were green once, and here, and covered 
with smiling people! As we came tip the hill 
there was difficulty, and here and there a hard 
pull to be sure, but strength, and spirits, and 
all sorts of cheery incident and companion- 
ship on the road; there were the tough strug- 
gles (by heaven's merciful will) overcome, the 
pauses, the faintings, the weakness, the lost 
way, perhaps, the bitter weather, the dreadful 
partings, the lonely night, the passionate grief 
— towards these I turn my thoughts as I sit 
and think in my hobby-coach under Time, the 
silver-wigged charioteer. The young folks in 
the same carriage meanwhile are looking for- 
wards. Nothing escapes their keen eyes — not 
a flower at the side of a cottage garden, nor a 
bunch of rosy-faced children at the gate: the 
landscape is all bright, the air brisk and jolly, 
the town yonder looks beautiful, and do you 
think they have learned to be difficult about 
the dishes at the inn? 

Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journey 
with his wife and children in the sociable, and 



Roundabout Papers 

he passes an ordinary brick house on the road 
with an ordinary little garden in the front, we 
will say, and quite an ordinary knocker to the 
door, and as many sashed windows as you 
please, quite common and square, and tiles, 
windows, chimney-pots, quite like others; or 
suppose, in driving over such and such a com- 
mon, he sees an ordinary tree, and an ordinary 
donkey browsing under it, if you like — wife 
and daughter look at these objects without the 
slightest particle of curiosity or interest. What 
is a brass knocker to them but a lion's head, 
or what not? and a thorn-tree with a pool be- 
side it, but a pool in which a thorn and a jack- 
ass are reflected? 

But you remember how once upon a time 
your heart used to beat, as you beat on that 
brass knocker, and whose c^es looked from the 
window above. You remember how by that 
thorn- tree and pool, where the geese were per- 
forming a prodigious evening concert, there 
might be seen, at a certain hour, somebody in 
a certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to 
be coming from a village yonder, and whose 
image has flickered in that pool. In that pool, 
near the thorn? Yes, in that goose-pool, never 
mind how long ago, when there were reflected 
the images of the geese — and two geese more. 
Here, at least, an oldster may have the ad- 
vantage of his young fellow-travellers, and so 
Putney Heath or the New Road may be in- 
vested with a halo of brightness invisible to 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

them, because it only beams out of his own 
soul. 

I have been reading the " Memorials of 
Hood " by his children,* and wonder whether 
the book will have the same interest for others 
and for younger people, as for persons of my 
own age and calling. Books of travel to any 
country become interesting to us who have 
been there. Men revisit the old school, though 
liateful to them, with ever so much kindliness 
and sentimental affection. There was the tree 
under which the bully licked you: here the 
ground where you had to fag out on holidays, 
and so forth. In a word, my dear sir, You 
are the most interesting subject to yourself, of 
any that can occupy your worship's thoughts. 
1 have no doubt, a Crimean soldier, reading a 
history of that siege, and how Jones and the 
gallant 99th were ordered to charge or what 
not, thinks, " Ah, yes, we of the 100th were 
placed so and so, I perfectly remember." So 
with this memorial of poor Hood, it may have, 
no doubt, a greater interest for me than for 
others, for I was fighting, so to speak, in a dif- 
ferent part of the field, and engaged, a young 
subaltern, in the Battle of Life, in which Hood 
fell, young still, and covered with glory. 
" The Bridge of Sighs " was his Corunna, his 
heights of Abraham — sickly, weak, wounded, 
he fell in the full blaze and fame of that great 
victory. 

* Memorials of Thomas Hood. Moxon, 1860. 2 vols. 
90 



Roundabout Papers 

What manner of man was the genius who 
penned that famous song? What like was 
Wolfe, who climbed and conquered on those 
famous heights of Abraham? We all want to 
know details regarding men who have achieved 
famous feats, whether of war, or wit, or elo- 
quence, or endurance, or knowledge. His one 
or two happy and heroic actions take a man's 
name and memory out of the crowd of names 
and memories. Henceforth he stands eminent. 
We scan him: we want to know all about him; 
we walk round and examine him, are curious, 
perhaps, and think are we not as strong and 
tall and capable as yonder champion; were we 
not bred as well, and could we not endure the 
winter's cold as well as he? Or we look up 
with all our eyes of admiration; will finu no 
fault in our hero: declare his beauty and pro- 
portions perfect; his critics envious detractors, 
and so forth. Yesterday, before he performed 
his feat, he was nobody. Who cared about his 
birthplace, his parentage, or the colour of his 
hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or 
by a series of great actions to which his genius 
accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians 
are busy finding out under what schoolmaster's 
ferule he was educated, where his grandmother 
was vaccinated, and so forth. If half-a-dozen 
washing-bills of Goldsmith's were to be found 
to-morrow, would they not inspire a general 
interest, and be printed in a hundred papers? 
I lighted upon Oliver, not very long since, in 
91 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

an old Town and Country Magazine, at the 
Pantheon masquerade " in an old English 
habit," Straightway my imagination ran out to 
meet him, to look at him, to follow him about. 
I forgot the names of scores of fine gentlemen 
of the past age, who were mentioned besides. 
We want to see this man who has amused and 
charmed us; who has been our friend, and 
given us hours of pleasant companionship and, 
kindly thought. 1 protest when 1 came, in the 
midst of those names of people of fashion, and 
beaux, and demireps, upon those names " Sir 
J. R-yn-lds, in a domino ; Mr. Cr-d-ck and Dr. 
G-ldsm-th, in two old English dresses/^ 1 had, so 
to speak, my heart in my mouth. What, you 
here, my dear Sir Joshua ? Ah, what an honour 
and privilege it is to see you! This is Mr. 
Goldsmith? And very much, sir, the ruff and 
the slashed doublet become you! Doctor! 
what a pleasure I had and have in reading the 
Animated Nature! Hov/ did you learn the 
secret of writing the decasyllabic line, and 
whence that sweet wailing note of tenderness 
that accompanies your song? Was Beau Tibbs 
a real man, and will you do me the honour of 
allowing me to sit at your table at supper? 
Don't you think you know how he would have 
talked? W^ould you not have liked to hear 
him prattle over the champagne? 

Now, Hood is passed away— passed off the 
earth as much as Goldsmith or Horace. The 
times in which he lived, and in which very 
93 



Roundabout Papers 

many of us lived and were young, are changing 
or changed. I saw Hood once as a young man, 
at a dinner which seems almost as ghostly now 
as that masquerade at the Pantheon (1772), of 
which we were speaking anon. It was at a 
dinner of the Literary Fund, in that vast apart- 
ment which is hung round with the portraits 
of very large Koyal Freemasons, now unsub- 
stantial ghosts. There at the end of the room 
was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were our 
companions. I quite remember his pale face; 
he was thin and deaf, and very silent; he 
scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and 
he made one pun. Seme gentleman missed his 

snuff-box, and Hood said, (the Freemasons' 

Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. 
Cuff in those daj^s, not by its present pro- 
prietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked 
for, and Cuff (remember that name) being the 
name of the landlord, Hood opened his silent 
jaws and said * * * * * Shall I tell you what 
he said? It was not a very good pun, which 
the great punster then made. Choose your fa- 
vourite pun out of " Whims and Oddities," and 
fancy that was the joke w^hich he contributed 
to the hilarity of our little table. 

Where those asterisks are drawn on the page, 
you must know, a pause occurred, during which 
I Avas engaged with " Hood's Own," having 
been referred to the book by this life of the 
author which I have just been reading. I am 
not going to dissert on Hood's humour; I am 
93 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

not a fair judge. Have I not said elsewhere 
that there are one or two wonderfully old 
gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips 
when I was a boy? I can't be a fair critic 
about them. I always think of that sovereign, 
that rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my 
young days happy. Those old sovereign-con- 
tributors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall 
laugh; they may commit murder, and I shall 
believe it was justifiable homicide. There is 
my friend Baggs, who goes about abusing me, 
and of course our dear mutual friends tell me. 
Abuse away, mon hon! You were so kind to 
me when I wanted kindness, that you may take 
the change out of that gold now, and say I am 
a cannibal and negro, if you will. Ha, Baggs! 
Dost thou wince as thou readest this line? 
Does guilty conscience throbbing at thy breast 
tell thee of whom the fable is narrated? Puff 
out thy wrath, and, when it has ceased to blow, 
my Baggs shall be to me as the Baggs of old— 
the generous, the gentle, the friendly. 

No, on second thoughts, I am determined I 
will not repeat that joke which I heard Hood 
make. He says he wrote these jokes with such 
ease that he sent manuscripts to the publishers 
faster than they could acknowledge the receipt 
thereof. I won't say that they were all good 
jokes, or that to read a great book full of them 
is a work at present altogether jocular. Writing 
to a friend respecting some memoir of him 
which had been published. Hood says, " You 
94 



Roundabout Papers 

will judge how well the author knows me, when 
he says my mind is rather serious than comic." 
At the time when he wrote these words, he evi- 
dently undervalued his own serious power, and 
thought that in punning and broad-grinning 
lay his chief strength. Is not there something 
touching in that simplicity and humility of 
faith ? " To make laugh is my calling," says 
he; "I must jump, I must grin, I must tumble, 
I must turn language head over heels, and leap 
through grammar; " and he goes to his work 
humbly and courageously, and what he has to 
do that does he with all his might, through 
sickness, through sorrow, through exile, pov- 
erty, fever, depression — there he is, always 
ready to his work, and with a jewel of 
genius in his pocket? Why, when he laid 
down hi« puns and pranks, put the motley off, 
and spoke out of his heart, all England and 
America listened with tears and wonder! 
Other men have delusions of conceit, and fancy 
themselves greater than they are, and that the 
world slights them. Have we not heard how 
Liston always thought he ought to play Ham- 
let? Here is a man with a power to touch the 
heart almost unequalled, and he passes days 
and years in writing, " Young Ben he was a 
nice young man," and so forth. To say truth, 
I have been reading in a book of " Hood's Own " 
until I am perfectly angry. " You great man, 
you good man, you true genius and poet," I 
cry out, as I turn page after page. " Do, do, 
95 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

make no more of these jokes, but be yourself, 
and take your station." 

When Hood was on his deathbed, Sir Robert 
Peel, who only knew of his illness, not of his 
imminent danger, wrote to him a noble and 
touching letter, announcing that a pension was 
conferred on him: 

"I am more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the 
personal satisfaction which I have had in doing that 
for which you return me warm and characteristic 
acknowledgments. 

" You perhaps tliirik that you are knoAvn to one 
with such multifarious occupations as myself, mere- 
ly by general reputation as an author ; but I assure 
you that there can be little, which you have written 
and acknowledged, which I have not read ; and that 
there are few who can appreciate and admire more 
than myself, the good sense and good feeling Avhich 
have taught you to infuse so much fun and merri- 
ment into writings correcting folly and exposing ab- 
surdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those 
limits within which wdt and facetiousness are not 
very often confined. You may write on with the 
consciousness of independence, as free and unfet- 
tered, as if no communication had ever passed be- 
tween us. I am not conferring a private obligation 
upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the 
legislature, Avhich has placed at the disposal of the 
Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) 
to be applied to the recognition of public claims on 
the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the 
names of those whose claims have been admitted 
on account of their literary or scientific eminence, 
you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of 
my statement. 

96 



Roundabout Papers 

"One return, indeed, I shall ask of you, — that 
you will give me the opportunity of making your 
personal acquaintance." 

And Hood, writing to a friend, enclosing a copy 
of Peel's letter, says, " Sir R. Peel came from 
Burleigh on Tuesday night, and went down to 
Brighton on Saturday. If he had written by 
post, I should not have had it till to-day. So 
he sent his servant with the enclosed on Satur- 
day night; another mark of considerate atten- 
tion." He is frightfully unwell, he continues: 
his wife says he looks quite green; but ill as 
he is, poor fellow, " his well is not dry. He 
has pumped out a sheet of Christmas fun, is 
drawing some cuts, and shall write a sheet 
more of his novel." 

Oh, sad, marvellous picture of courage, of 
honesty, of patient endurance, of duty strug- 
gling against pain! How noble Peel's figure 
is standing by that sick bed! how generous his 
words, how dignified and sincere his compas- 
sion! And the poor dying man, with a heart 
full of natural gratitude towards his noble bene- 
factor, must turn to him and say — " If it be well 
to be remembered by a Minister, it is better still 
not to be forgotten by . him in a ' hurly Bur- 
leigh 1 ' " Can you laugh ? Is not the joke 
horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips? 
As dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with 
his bow — as one reads of Catholics on their 
death-beds putting on a Capuchin dress to go 
7 97 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

out of the world — here is poor Hood at his last 
hour putting on his ghastly motley, and utter- 
ing one joke more. 

He dies, however, in dearest love and peace 
with his children, wife, friends; to the former 
especially his whole life had been devoted, and 
every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, and 
affection. In going through the record of his 
most pure, modest, honourable life, and living 
along with him, you come to trust him thor- 
oughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, af- 
fectionate, and upright soul, with whom you 
have been brought into communion. Can we 
say as much of the lives of all men of letters ? 
Here is one at least without guile, without pre- 
tension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his 
family and little modest circle of friends ten- 
derly devoted. 

And what a hard work, and what a slender 
reward! In the little domestic details with 
which the book abounds, what a simple life is 
shown to us! The most simple little pleasures 
and amusements delight and occupy him. You 
have revels on shrimps ; the good wife making 
the pie ; details about the maid, and criticisms 
on her conduct; wonderful tricks played with 
the plum-pudding — all the pleasures centring 
round the little humble home. One of the first 
men of his time, he is appointed editor of a 
Magazine at a salary of 300Z. per annum, signs 
himself exultingly " Ed. N. M. M.," and the 
family rejoice over the income as over a for- 



Roundabout Papers 

tune. He goes to a Greenwich dinner — what a 
feast and a rejoicing afterwards! — 

" Well, we drank ' the Boz ' with a delectable clat- 
ter, which drew from him a good warm-hearted 
speech. . . . He looked very well, and had a 
younger brother along with him. . . . Then we 
had songs. Barham chanted a Robin Hood ballad, 
and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord 
H ; and somebody, unknown to me, gave a capi- 
tal imitation of a French showman. Then we toasted 
Mrs. Boz, and the Chairman, and Vice, and the Tradi- 
tional Priest sang the 'Deep deep sea,' in his deep 
deep voice ; and then we drank to Procter, who 
wrote the said song ; also Sir J. Wilson's good health, 
and Cruikshank's, and Ainsworth's : and a Man- 
chester friend of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, 
so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have 
been not composed, but manufactured. Jerdan, as 
Jerdanish as usual on such occasions — you know 
how paradoxically he is quite at home in dining out. 
As to myself, I had to make my second maiden speech^ 
for Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in 
terms my modesty might allow me to repeat to ?/om, 
but my memory won't. However, I ascribed the 
toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured 
them that their wishes had already improved it — 
that I felt a brisker circulation — a more genial 
warmth about the heart, and explained that a cer- 
tain trembling of my hand was not from palsy, or 
my old ague, but an inclination in my hand to shake 
itself with every one present. Whereupon I had to 
go through the friendly ceremony with as many of 
the company as were within reach, besides a few 
more who came express from the other end of the 
table. Very gratifying, wasn't it? Though I can- 
99 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

not go quite so 'ar as Jane, who wants me to have 
that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved in 
spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, 
as usual when I go out, because I am so domestic 
and steady, and was down at the door before I could 
ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his 
own carriage. Poor girl ! what would she do if she 
had a wild husband instead of a tame one ? " 

And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and 
fondles the hand v^^hich has been shaken by so 
u\any illustrious men! The little feast dates 
back only eighteen years, and yet somehow it 
seems as distant as a dinner at Mr. Thrale's, or 
a meeting at Will's. 

Poor little gleam of sunshine ! very little good 
cheer enlivens that sad simple life. We have 
the triumph of the Magazine : then a new 
Magazine projected and produced : then illness 
and the last scene, and the kind Peel by the 
dying man's bedside speaking noble words of 
respect and sympathy, and soothing the last 
throbs of the tender honest heart. 

I like, I say. Hood's life even better than his 
books, and I wish, with all my heart, Monsieur 
et cher confrere , the same could be said for 
both of us, when the inkstream of our life hath 
ceased to run. Yes : if I drop first, dear Baggs, 
I trust you may jSnd reason to modify some of 
the unfavourable views of my character, which 
you are freely imparting to our mutual friends. 
What ought to be the literary man's point of 
honour now-a-days? Suppose, friendly reader, 
100 



Roundabout Papers 

you are one of the craft, what legacy would 
you like to leave to your children? First of 
all (and by Heaven's gracious help) you would 
pray and strive to give them such an endow- 
ment of love, as should last certainly for all 
their lives, and perhaps be transmitted to their 
children. You would (by the same aid and 
blessing) keep your honour pure, and transmit 
a name unstained to those who have a right 
to bear it. You would, — though this faculty 
of giving is one of the easiest of the literary 
man's qualities — you would, out of your earn- 
ings, small or great, be able to help a poor 
brother in need, to dress his wounds, and, if 
it were but twopence, to give him succour. Is 
the money which the noble Macaulay gave to 
the poor lost to his family? God forbid. To 
the loving hearts of his kindred is it not rather 
the most precious part of their inheritance? 
It was invested in love and righteous doing, 
and it bears interest in heaven. You will, if 
letters be your vocation, find saving harder 
than giving and spending. To save be your 
endeavour, too, against the night's coming when 
no man may work ; when the arm is weary with 
the long day's labour; when the brain perhaps 
grows dark; when the old, who can labour no 
more, want warmth and rest, and the young 
ones call for supper. 

I copied the little galley-slave, who is made 
to figure in the initial letter of this paper, from 
101 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

a quaint old silver spoon which we purchased 
in a curiosity-shop at the Hague. It is one of 
the gift spoons so common in Holland, and 
which have multiplied so astonishingly of late 
years at our dealers' in old silverware. Along 
the stem of the spoon are written the words: 
*' Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus gliekledt ghegJiaen " 
—"In the year 1609 I went thus clad." The 
good Dutchman was released from his Algerine 
captivity (I imagine his figure looks like that 
of a slave amongst the Moors), and in his 
thank-ofi'ering to some godchild at home, he 
thus piously records his escape. 

Was not poor Cervantes also a captive 
amongst the Moors? Did not Fielding, and 
Goldsmith, and Smollett, too, die at the chain 
as well as poor Hood? Think of Fielding going 
on board his wretched ship in the Thames, with 
scarce a hand to bid him farewell; of brave 
Tobias Smollett, and his life, how hard, and 
how poorly rewarded; of Goldsmith, and the 
physician whispering, " Have you something on 
your mind ? " and the wild dying eyes answer- 
ing, " Yes." Notice how Boswell speaks of 
Goldsmith, and the splendid contempt with 
which he regards him. Read Hawkins on Field- 
ing, and the scorn with which Dandy Walpole 
and Bishop Hurd speak of him. Galley-slaves 
doomed to tug the oar and wear the chain, 
whilst my lords and dandies take their pleasure, 
and hear fine music and disport with fine ladies 
in the cabin! 

102 



Roundabout Papers 

But stay. Was there any cause for this 
scorn? Had some of these great men weak- 
nesses which gave inferiors advantage over 
them? Men of letters cannot lay their hands 
on their hearts, and say, " No, the fault was 
fortune's, and the indifferent world's, not Gold- 
smith's nor Fielding's." There was no reason 
why Oliver should always be thriftless; why 
Fielding and Steele should sponge upon their 
friends; why Sterne should make love to his 
neighbours' wives. Swift, for a long time, was 
as poor as any wag that ever laughed: but he 
owed no penny to his neighbours: Addison, 
when he wore his most threadbare coat, could 
hold his head up, and maintain his dignity: 
and, I dare vouch, neither of those gentlemen, 
when they were ever so poor, asked any man 
alive to pity their condition, and have a regard 
to the weaknesses incidental to the literary pro- 
fession. Galley-slave, forsooth! If you are 
sent to prison for some error for which the law 
awards that sort of laborious seclusion, so much 
the more shame for you. If you are chained 
to the oar a prisoner of war, like Cervantes, 
you have the pain, but not the shame, and the 
friendly compassion of mankind to reward you. 
Galley-slaves, indeed! What man has not his 
oar to pull ? There is that wonderful old stroke- 
oar in the Queen's galley. How many years 
has he pulled? Day and night, in rough water 
or smooth, with what invincible vigour and 
surprising gaiety he plies his arms! There is 
103 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

in the same Oalere Capifaine, that well-known, 
trim figure, the bow-oar; how he tugs, and with 
what a will! How both of them have been 
abused in their time! Take the Lawyer's gal- 
ley, and that dauntless octogenarian in com- 
mand; when has he ever complained or repined 
about his slavery? There is the Priest's galley 
— black and lawn sails — do any mariners out 
of Thames work harder? When lawyer, and 
statesman, and divine, and writer are snug in 
bed, there is a ring at the poor Doctor's bell. 
Forth he must go, in rheumatism or snow; a 
galley-slave bearing his galley-pots to quench 
the flames of fever, to succour mothers and 
young children in their hour of peril, and, as 
gently and soothingly as may be, to carry the 
hopeless patient over to the silent shore. And 
have we not just read of the actions of the 
Queen's galleys and their brave crews in the 
Chinese waters? Men not more worthy of 
human renown and honour to-day in their vic- 
tory, than last year in their glorious hour of 
disaster. So with stout hearts may we ply the 
oar, messmat«6 all, till the voyage is over, and 
the Harbour of Rest is found. 



ON BEING FOUND OUT 

At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's 
reign, when I was a boy at a private and pre- 
paratory school for young gentlemen, I remem- 
104 



Roundabout Papers 

ber the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, 
one night, to march into a little garden at the 
back of the house, and thence to proceed one 
by one into a tool or hen-house, (I was but a 
tender little thing just put into short clothes, 
and can't exactly say whether Lhe house was 
for tools or hens,) and in that house to put 
our hands into a sack which stood on a bench, 
a candle burning beside it, I put my hand into 
the sack. My hand came out quite black. 1 
went and joined the other boys in the school- 
room; and all their hands were black too. 

By reason of my tender age (and there are 
some critics who, I hope, will be satisfied by 
my acknowledging that I am a hundred and 
fifty-six next birthday) I could not understand 
what was the meaning of this night excursion 
— this candle, this tool-house, this bag of soot. 
I think we little boys were taken out of our 
sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We came, 
then, and showed our little hands to the mas- 
ter; washed them or not — most probably, I 
should say, not — and so went bewildered back 
to bed. 

Something had been stolen in the school that 
day; and Mr. Wiseacre having read in a book 
of an ingenious method of finding out a thief 
by making him put his hand into a sack 
(which, if guilty, the rogue would shirk from 
doing), all we boys were subjected to the trial. 
Goodness knows what the lost object was, or 
who stole it. We all had black hands to show 
105 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

to the master. And the thief, whoever he was, 
was not Found Out that time. 

I wonder if the rascal is alive — an elderly- 
scoundrel he must be by this time; and a 
hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old school- 
fellow presents his kindest regards — parentheti- 
cally remarking what a dreadful place that 
private school was; cold, chilblains, bad dinners, 
not enough victuals, and caning awful! — Are 
you alive still, I say, you nameless villain, who 
escaped discovery on that day of crime? I 
hope you have escaped often since, old sinner. 
Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you and me, 
my man, that we are not found out in all our 
peccadilloes; and that our backs can slip away 
from the master and the cane ! 

Just consider what life would be, if every 
rogue was found out, and flogged coram populo! 
What a butchery, what an indecency, what an 
endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out 
about my misanthropy. My good friend Mealy- 
mouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you 
go to church? When there, do you say, or do 
you not, that you are a miserable sinner? and 
saying so, do you believe or disbelieve it? If 
you are a M. S., don't you deserve correction, 
and aren't you grateful if you are to be let off? 
I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we 
are not all found out! 

Just picture to yourself everybody who does 
wrong being found out, and punished accord- 
ingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school 
106 



Roundabout Papers 

being whipped; and then the assistants, and 
then the head master (Doctor Bradford let us 
call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being 
tied up, having previously superintended the 
correction of the whole army. After the young 
gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty 
exercises, fancy Doctor Lincolnsinn being taken 
up for certain faults in Ms Essay and Review. 
After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, sup- 
pose we hoist up a bishop, and give him a couple 
of dozen! (I see my Lord Bishop of Double- 
Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on 
his right reverend bench.) After we have cast 
off the bishop, what are we to say to the Min- 
ister who appointed him? My Lord Cinq- 
warden, it is painful to have to use personal 
correction to a boy of your age; but really 
. . . Siste tandem, carnifex! The butchery 
is too horrible. The hand drops powerless, ap- 
palled at the quantity of birch which it must 
cut and brandish. I am glad Ave are not all 
found out, I say again; and protest, my dear 
brethren, against our having our deserts. 

To fancy all men found out and punished is 
bad enough; but imagine all women found out 
in the distinguished social circle in which you 
and I have the honour to move. Is it not a 
mercy that so many of these fair criminals re- 
main unpunished and undiscovered? There is 
Mrs. Longbow, who is for ever practising, and 
who shoots poisoned arrows, too; when you 
meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her 
107 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

with the wickedness she has done, and is doing. 
There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most 
respectable woman, and a model in society. 
There is no use in saying what you really know 
regarding her and her goings on. There is 
Diana Hunter — what a little haughty prude it 
is; and yet we know stories about her which 
are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, 
for the sake of the good, that the bad should 
not all be found out. You don't want your 
children to know the history of that lady in 
the next box, w^ho is so handsome, and whom 
they admire so. Ah me, what would life be if 
we were all found out, and punished for all 
our faults? Jack Ketch would be in perma- 
nence; and then who would hang Jack Ketch? 
They talk of murderers being pretty certainly 
found out. Psha! I have heard an authority 
awfully competent vow and declare that scores 
and hundreds of murders are committed, and 
nobody is the wiser. That terrible man men- 
tioned one or two ways of committing murder, 
which he maintained were quite common, and 
were scarcely ever found out. A man, for in- 
stance, comes home to his wife, and . . . 
but I pause — I know that this Magazine has a 
very large circulation. Hundreds and hundreds 
of thousands — why not say a million of people 
at once? — well, say a million, read it. And 
amongst these countless readers, I might be 
teaching some monster how to make away with 
his wife without being found out, some fiend 
108 



Roundabout Papers 

of a woman how to destroy her dear husband. 
I will tioi then tell this easy and simple way 
of murder, as communicated to me by a most 
respectable i^arty in the confidence of private 
intercourse. Suppose some gentle reader were 
to try this most simple and easy receipt — it 
seems to me almost infallible — and come to 
grief in consequence, and be found out and 
hanged? Should I ever pardon myself for hav- 
ing been the means of doing injury to a single 
one of our esteemed subscribers? The pre- 
scription whereof I speak — that is to say, 
whereof I don't speak — shall be buried in this 
bosom. Xo, I am a humane man. I am not 
one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my 
wife, " My dear ! I am going away for a few 
days to Brighton. Here are aL the keys of the 
house. You may open every door and closet, 
except the one at the end of the oak-room op- 
posite the fire-place, with the little bronze Shak- 
speare on the mantelpiece (or what not)." I 
don't say this to a woman — unless, to be^sure, 
I want to get rid of her — because, after ^[c\ a 
caution, I know she'll peep into the closet. I 
say nothing about the closet at all. I keep the 
key in my pocket, and a being whom I love, 
but who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out 
of harm's way. You toss up your head, dear 
angel, drub on the ground with your lovely 
little feet, on the table Avith your sweet rosy 
fingers, and cry, " Oh, sneerer ! You don't 
know the depth of woman's feeling, the lofty 
109 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

scorn of all deceit, the entire absence of mean 
curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you 
libel us so! " Ah, Delia! dear, dear Delia! It 
is because I fancy I do know something about 
you (not all, mind — no, no; no man knows 
that) — Ah, my bride, my ringdove, my rose, 
my poppet — choose, in fact, whatever name you 
like — bulbul of my grove, fountain of my desert, 
sunshine of my darkling life, and joy of my 
dungeoned existence, it is because I do know a 
little about you that I conclude to say nothing 
of that private closet, and keep my key in my 
pocket. You take away that closet-key then, 
and the house-key. You lock Delia in. You 
keep her out of harm's way and gadding, and 
so she never can be found out. 

And yet by little strange accidents and co- 
incidences how we are being found out every 
day. You remember that old story of the Abbe 
Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one 
night how the first confession he ever received 
was — from a murderer let us say. Presently 
enters to supper the Marquis de Croquemitaine. 
" Palsambleu, abbe ! " says the brilliant mar- 
quis, taking a pinch of snuflt", " are you here ? 
Gentlemen and ladies! I was the abbe's first 
penitent, and I made him a confession which I 
promise you astonished him." 

To be sure how queerly things are found out! 
Here is an instance. Only the other day I waa 
writing in these Roundabout Papers about a 
certain man, whom I facetiously called Baggs; 

no 



Roundabout Papers 

and who had abused me to my friends, who of 
course told me. Shortly after that paper was 
published another friend — Sacks let us call him 
^scowls fiercely at me as I am sitting in per- 
fect good-humour at the club, and passes on 
without speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks 
thinks it is about him that I was writing: 
whereas, upon my honour and conscience, i 
never had him once in my mind, and was point- 
ing my moral from quite another man. But 
don't you see, by this wrath of the guilty-con- 
scienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me 
too? He has owned himself guilty, never hav- 
ing been accused. He has winced when nobody 
thought of hitting him. I did but put the cap 
out, and madly butting and chafing, behold my 
friend rushes to put his head into it! Never 
mind, Sacks, you are found out; but I bear 
you no malice, my man. 

And yet to be found out, I know from my 
own experience, must be painful and odious, 
and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity. 
Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With 
fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and 
an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a 
character for courage. I swear fearfully at 
cabmen and women; brandish riiy bludgeon, 
and perhaps knoCxv down a little man or two 
with it: brag of the images which I break at 
the shooting-gallery, and pass amongst my 
friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of 
neither man nor dragon. Ah me! Suppose 
111 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

some brisk little chap steps up and gives me a 
caning in St. James's Street, with all the heads 
of my friends looking out of all the club win- 
dows. My reputation is gone. I irighten no 
man more. My nose is pulled by whipper- 
snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. 
I am found out. And in the days of my tri- 
umphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and 
were taken in by my swagger, I always knew 
that I was a lily-liver, and expected that I 
should be found out some day. 

That certainty of being found out must haunt 
and depress many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let 
us say it is a clergyman, who can pump copious 
floods of tears out of his own eyes and those of 
his audience. He thinks to himself, " I am but 
a poor swindling, chattering rogue. My bills 
are unpaid. I have jilted several women whom 
I have promised to marry. I don't know 
whether I believe what I preach, and I know I 
have stolen the very sermon over which I have 
been snivelling. Have they foiind me out?" 
says he, as his head drops down en the cushion. 

Then your writer, poet, historian, novelist, or 
what not ? The " Beacon " says that " Jones's 
work is one of the first order." The *' Lamp " 
declares that " Jones's tragedy surpasses every 
work since the days of Him of Avon." The 
" Comet " asserts that " J.'s ' Life of Goody 
Two-shoes' is a HTTJ/.ia l'^ a si, a noble and en- 
during montiment to the fame of that admirable 
Englishwoman," and so forth. But then Jonea 
1J2 



Roundabout Papers 

knows that he has lent the critic of the " Bea- 
con " five pounds; that his pubiishei' has a half- 
share in the "Lamp;" and that the "Comet" 
comes repeatedly to dine with him. It is all 
very well. Jones is immortal until he is found 
out; and then down comes the extinguisher, 
and the immortal is dead and buried. The idea 
{dies irce!) of discovery must haunt many a 
man, and make him uneasy, as the trum2)ets 
are pufRng in his triumph. Brown, who has a 
higher place than he deserves, cowers before 
Smith, who has found him out. What is a 
chorus of critics shouting " Bravo ? " — a public 
clapping hands and flinging garlands? Brown 
kno^^'S that Smith has found him out. Puff, 
trumpets! Wave, banners! Huzza, boys, for 
the immortal Brown ! " This is all very well," 
B. thinks (bowing the while, smiling, laying his 
hand to his heart) ; " but there stands Smith 
at the window: he has measured me; and some 
day the others will find me out too." It is a 
very curious sensation to sit by a man who 
has found you out, and who you know has 
found you out; or, vice versa, to sit with a 
man whom yoti have found out. His talent? 
Bah! His virtue? We know a little story or 
two about his virtue, and he know^s we know 
it. We are thinking over friend Robinson's 
antecedents, as we grin, bow and talk; and we 
are both humbugs together. Robinson a good fel- 
low, is he ? You know how he behaved to Hicks ? 
A good-natured man, is he? Pray do you re- 
8 113 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

member that little story of Mrs. Eobinson's 
black eye? How men have to work, to talk, 
to smile, to go to bed, and try and sleep, with 
this dread of being found out on their eon- 
sciences! Bardolph, who has robbed a church, 
and Nym, who has taken a purse, go to their 
usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with their 
companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appears, 
and says, " Oh, Bardolph ! I want you about 
that there pyx business ! " Mr. Bardolph 
knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his 
hands to the little steel cuffs, and walks away 
quite meekly. He is found out. He must go. 
" Good-bye, Doll Tearsheet ! Good-bye, Mrs. 
Quicklj^, ma'am! " The other gentlemen and 
ladies de la societe look on and exchange mute 
adieux with the departing friends. And an 
assured time will come when the other gentle- 
men and ladies will be found out too. 

What a wonderful and beautiful provision of 
nature it has been that, for the most part, our 
womankind are not endowed with the faculty 
of finding us out ! They don't doubt, and probe, 
and weigh, and take your measure. Lay down 
this paper, my benevolent friend and reader, 
go into your drawing-room now, and utter a 
joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence the 
ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to 
Brown's house, and tell Mrs. Brown and the 
young ladies what you think of him, and see 
what a welcome you will get! In like manner, 
let him come to your house, and tell jjour good 
114 



Roundabout Papers 

lady his candid opinion of you, and fancy how 
she will receive him! Would you have your 
wife and children know you exactly for what 
you are, and esteem you precisely at your 
worth? If so, my friend, you will live in a 
dreary house, and you will have but a chilly 
fireside. Do you suppose the people round it 
don't see your homely face as under a glamour, 
and, as it were, with a halo of love round it? 
You don't fancy you are, as you seem to them? 
No such thing, my man. Put away that mon- 
strous conceit, and be thankful that tliey have 
not found you out. 



ON LETTS'S DIARY 

Mine is one of your No. 12 diaries, three 
shillings cloth boards; silk limp, gilt edges, 
three-and-six; French morocco, tuck ditto, four^ 
and-six. It has two pages, ruled with faint 
lines for memoranda, for every week, and a 
ruled account at the end, for the twelve months 
from January to December, where you may set 
do\vn your incomings and your expenses. I 
hope yours, my respected reader, are large; that 
there are many fine round sums of figures on 
each side of the page: liberal on the expenditure 
side, greater still on the receipt. I hope, sir, 
you will be " a better man," as they say, in '62 
than in this moribund '61, whose career of life 
is just coming to its terminus. A better man 
115 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

in purse? in body? in soul's health? Amen, 
good sir, in all. Who is there so good in mind, 
body or estate, but bettering won't still be 
good for him? O unknown Fate, presiding over 
next year, if you will give me better health, a 
better appetite, a better digestion, a better in- 
come, a better temper in '62 than you have be- 
stowed in '61, I think your servant will be the 
better for the changes. For instance, I should 
be the better for a new coat. This one, I ac- 
knowledge, is very old. The family says so. 
My good friend, who amongst us would not be 
the better if he would give up some old habits? 
Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the 
allegory? Alas! at our time of life we don't 
like to give up those old habits, do we? It is 
ill to change. There is the good old loose, easy, 
slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example. What 
man of sense likes to fling it off and put on a 
tight guiyide prim dress-coat that pinches him? 
There is the cozy wraprascal, self-indulgence — 
how easy it is! How warm! How it always 
seems to fit! You can walk out in it; you can 
go down to dinner in it. You can say of such 
what Tully says of his books: Pernoctat noMs- 
cum, peregrinafur, rusticatur. It is a little 
slatternly— it is a good deal stained — it isn't 
becoming — it smells of cigar-smoke; but, allons 
done! let the world call me idle and sloven. I 
love my ease better than my neighbour's opin- 
ion. I live to please myself; not you, Mr. 
Dandy, with your supercilious airs. I am a 
116 



Roundabout Papers 

philosopher. Perhaps I live in my tub, and 

don't make any other use of it . We won't 

pursue further this unsavoury metaphor; but, 
with regard to some of your old habits, let us 
say— 

1. The habit of being censorious, and speak- 
ing ill of your neighbours. 

2. The habit of getting into a passion with 
your man-servant, your maid-servant, your 
daughter, wife, &c. 

3. The habit of indulging too much at table. 

4. The habit of smoking in the dining-room 
after dinner. 

5. The habit of spending insane sums of 
money in hric-d-hrac, tall copies, binding, Elze- 
virs, &c.; '20 Port, outrageously fine horses, 
ostentatious entertainments, and what not? or, 

6. The habit of screwing meanly, when rich, 
and chuckling over the saving of half-a-crown, 
whilst you are poisoning your friends and fam- 
ily with bad wine. 

7. The habit of going to sleep immediately 
after dinner, instead of cheerfully entertaining 
Mrs. Jones and the family: or, 

8. Ladies! The habit of running up bills 
with the milliners, and swindling paterfamilias 
on the house bills. 

9. The habit of keeping him waiting for 
breakfast. 

10. The habit of sneering at Mrs. Brown and 
the Miss Browns, because they are not quite 
du monde, or quite so genteel as Lady Smith. 

117 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

11. The habit of keeping your wretched 
father up at balls till five o'clock in the morn- 
ing, when he has to be at his office at eleven. 

12. The habit of fighting with each other, 
dear Louisa, Jane, Arabella, Amelia. 

13. The habit of always ordering John Coach- 
man three-quarters of an hour before you want 
him. 

Such habits, I say, sir or madam, if you have 
had to note in your diary of '61, I have not the 
slightest doubt you will enter in your pocket- 
book of '62. There are habits Nos. 4 and 7, for 
example. I am morally sure that some of us 
will not give up those bad customs, though the 
women cry out and grumble, and scold ever 
so justly. There are habits Nos. 9 and 13. I 
feel perfectly certain, my dear young ladies, 
that you will continue to keep John Coachman 
waiting; that you will continue to give the 
most satisfactory reasons for keeping him wait- 
ing: and as for (9), you will show that you 
once (on the 1st of April last, let us say,) came 
to breakfast first, and that you are always first 
in consequence. 

Yes; in our '62 diaries, I fear we may all of 
us make some of the '61 entries. There is my 
friend Freehand, for instance. (Aha! Master 
Freehand, how you will laugh to find yourself 
here!) F. is in the habit of spending a little, 
ever so little, more than his income. He shows 
you how Mrs. Freehand works, and works (and 
indeed. Jack Freehand, if you say she is an 
118 



Roundabout Papers 

angel, you don't say too much of her) ; how 
they toil, and how they mend, and patch, and 
pinch; and how they can't live on their means. 
And I very much fear — nay, I will bet him half 
a bottle of Gladstone 14s. per dozen claret — that 
the account which is a little on the wrong side 
this year, will be a little on the wrong side in 
the next ensuing year of grace. 

A diary. Dies. Hodie. How queer to read 
are some of the entries in the journal! Here 
are the records of dinners eaten, and gone the 
way of flesh. The lights burn blue somehow, 
and Ave sit before the ghosts of victuals. Hark 
at the dead jokes resurging! Memory greets 
them with the ghost of a smile. Here are the 
lists of the individuals who have dined at your 
own humble table. The agonies endured before 
and during those entertainments are renewed, 
and smart again. What a failure that special 
grand dinner was ! Hov/ those dreadful occa- 
sional waiters did break the old china! What 
a dismal hash poor Mary, the cook, made of 
the French dish which she loould try out of 
FrancntelU! How angry Mrs. Pope was at not 
going down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop ! How 
Trimalchio sneered at your absurd attempt to 
give a feast; and Harpagon cried out at your 
extravagance and ostentation! How Lady Al- 
mack bullied the other ladies in the drawing- 
room (when no gentlemen were present) : never 
asked you back to dinner again: left her card 
by her footman: and took not the slightest 
119 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

notice of your wife and daughters at Lady 
Hustleby's assembly! On the other hand, how 
easy, cozy, merry, comfortable, those little din- 
ners were ; got up at one or two days' notice ; 
when everybody was contented; the soup as 
clear as amber; the wine as good as Tri- 
malchio's own; and the people kept their car- 
riages waiting, and would not go away till 
midnight ! 

Along with the catalogue of bygone pleasures, 
balls, banquets, and the like, which the pages 
record, comes a list of much more important 
occurrences, and remembrances of graver im- 
port. On two days of Dives' diary are printed 
notices that " Dividends are due at the Bank." 
Let us hope, dear sir, that this announcement 
considerably interests you; in which case, prob- 
ably, yo'u have no need of the almanack- 
maker's printed reminder. If you look over 
poor Jack Reckless's note-book, amongst his 
memoranda of racing odds given and taken, 
perhaps you may read: — " Nabbam's bill, due 
29th September, U2l. 15s. Qd." Let us trust, 
as the day has passed, that the little trans- 
action here noted has been satisfactorily ter- 
minated. If you are paterfamilias, and a 
worthy kind gentleman, no doubt you have 
marked down on your register, - 17th December 
(say), "Boys come home." Ah, how carefully 
that blessed day is marked in tlieir little calen- 
dars! In my time it used to be, Wednesday, 
13th November, "5 tveels from the holidays;'' 
120 



Roundabout Papers 

Wednesday, 20th November, " 4 weeks from the 
holidays; " until sluggish time sped on, and we 
came to Wednesday, 18th December. rap- 
ture! Do you remember pea-shooters? I think 
we only had them on going home for holidays 
from private schools, — at public schools, men 
are too dignified. And then came that glorious 
announcement, Wednesday, 27th, " Papa took 
■iBi- to the Pantomime;" or if not papa, perhaps 
you condescended to go to the pit, under charge 
of a footman. 

That was near the end of the year — and 
mamma gave you a new pocket-book, perhaps, 
with a little coin, God bless her, in the pocket. 
And that pocket-book was for next year, you 
know; and in that pocket-book you had to 
write down that sad day, Wednesday, January 
24th, eighteen hundred and never mind what, — 
when Doctor Birch's young friends were ex- 
pected to re-assemble. 

Ah me! Every person who turns this page 
over has his own little diary, in paper or ruled 
in his memory tablets and in which are set 
down the transactions of the now dying year. 
Boys and men, we have our calendar, mothers 
and maidens. For example, in your calendar 
pocket-book, my good Eliza, what a sad, sad 
day that is — how fondly and bitterly remem- 
bered — when your boy went off to his regiment, 
to India, to danger, to battle perhaps. What 
a day was that last day at home, when the 
tall brother sat yet amongst the family, the 
121 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

little ones round about him wondering at 
saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword-cases, gun-cases, 
and other wondrous apparatus of war and 
travel which poured in and filled the hall; the 
new dressing-case for the beard not yet grown; 
the great sword-case at which little brother 
Tom looks so admiringly! What a dinner that 
was, that last dinner, when little and grown 
children assembled together, and all tried to be 
cheerful. What a night was that last night, 
when the young ones were at roost for the last 
time together under the same roof, and the 
mother lay alone in her chamber counting the 
fatal hours as they tolled one after another, 
amidst her tears, her watching, her fond pray- 
ers. What a night that was, and yet how 
quickly the melancholy dawn came! Only too 
soon the sun rose over the houses. And now 
in a moment more the city seemed to wake. 
The house began to stir. The family gathers 
together for the last meal. For the last time 
in the midst of them the widow kneels amongst 
her kneeling children, and falters a prayer in 
which she commits her dearest, her eldest born, 
to the care of the Father of all. night, what 
tears you hide — what prayers you hear! And 
so the nights pass and the days succeed, until 
that one comes when tears and parting shall 
be no more. 

In your diary, as in mine, there are days 
marked with sadness, not for this year only, 
but for all. On a certain day — and the sun 



Roundabout Papers 

perhaps shining ever so brightly — the house- 
mother comes down to her family with a sad 
lace, which scares the children round about in 
the midst of their laughter and prattle. They 
may have forgotten — but she has not — a day 
which came, twenty years ago it may be, and 
which she remembers only too well: the long 
night-watch; the dreadful dawning and the 
rain beating at the pane; the infant speechless, 
but moaning in its little crib; and then the 
awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub 
face, when the cries have ceased, and the little 
suffering breast heaves no more. Then the 
children, as they see their mother's face, re- 
member this was the day on which their little 
brother died. It was before they were born; 
but she remembers it. And as they pray to- 
gether, it seems almost as if the spirit of the 
little lost one was hovering round the group. 
So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dear- 
est-loved, groAvn people, aged, infants. As we 
go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are 
grave-stones, and on each more and more names 
are written; unless haply you live beyond man's 
common age, when friends have dropped off, 
and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you 
reach the terminus alone. 

In this past year's diary is there any precious 
day noted on which you have made a new 
friend? This is a piece of good fortune be- 
stowed but grudgingly on the old. After a 
certain age a new friend is a wonder, like 
123 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Sarah's child. Aged persons are seldom capa- 
ble of bearing friendships. Do you remember 
how warmly you loved Jack and Tom when 
you were at school, what a passionate regard 
you had for Ned when you were at college, and 
the immense letters you wrote to each other? 
How often do you write, now that postage costs 
nothing? There is the age of blossoms and 
sweet budding green: the age of generous sum- 
mer; the autumn when the leaves drop; and 
then winter, shivering and bare. Quick, chil- 
dren, and sit at my feet: for they are cold, very 
cold: and it seems as if neither wine nor 
worsted will warm 'em. 

In this past year's diary is there any dismal 
day noted in which you have lost a friend? In 
mine there is. I do not mean by death. Those 
who are gone, you have. Those who departed 
loving you, love you still; and you love them 
always. They are not really gone, those dear 
hearts and true; they are only gone into the 
next room; and you will presently get up and 
follow them, and yonder door will close upon 
you, and you will be no more seen. As I am 
in this cheerful mood, I will tell you a fine and 
touching story of a doctor which I heard lately. 
About two years since there was, in our or 
some other city, a famous doctor, into whose 
consulting-room crowds came daily, so that 
they might be healed. Now this doctor had 
a suspicion that there was something vitally 
wrong with himself, and he went to consult 
^34 



Roundabout Papers 

another famous physician at Dublin, or it may 
be at Edinburgh. And he of Edinburgh 
punched his comrade's sides; and listened at 
his heart and lungs; and felt his pulse, I sup- 
pose; and looked at his tongue; and when he 
had done, Doctor London said to Doctor Edin- 
burgh, " Doctor, how long have I to live ? " 
And Doctor Edinburgh said to Doctor London, 
" Doctor, you may last a year." 

Then Doctor London came home, knowing 
that what Doctor Edinburgh said was true. 
And he made up his accounts, with man and 
heaven, I trust. And he visited his patients 
as usual. And he went about healing, and 
cheering, and soothing and doctoring; and 
thousands of sick people were benefited by him. 
And he said not a word to his family at homci 
but lived amongst them cheerful and tender 
and calm, and loving; though he knew the 
night was at hand when he should see them 
and work no more. 

And it was winter time, and they came and 
told him that some man at a distance — very 
sick, but very rich — wanted him; and, though 
Doctor London knew that he was himself at 
death's door, he went to the sick man; for he 
knew the large fee would be good for his chil- 
dren after him. And he died; and his family 
never knew until he was gone, that he had 
been long aware of the inevitable doom. 

This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it 
not? You see, in regard to these Roundabout 
125 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

discourses, I never knew whether they are to 
be merry or dismal. My hobby has the bit in 
his mouth; goes liis own way; and sometimes 
trots througli a park, and sometimes paces by 
a cemetery. Two days since came the printer's 
little emissary, with a note saying, " We are 
waiting for the Roundabout Paper! " A 
Roundabout Paper about what or whom? 
How stale it has become, that printed jollity 
about Christmas! Carols, and wassail-bowls, 
and holly, and mistletoe, and yule-logs de com- 
mande — what heaps of these have we not had 
for years past! Well, year after year the sea- 
son comes. Come frost, come thaw, come snow, 
come rain, year after year my neighbour the 
parson has to make his sermon. They are get- 
ting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christ- 
mas trees at Fortnum and Mason's now. The 
genii of the theatres are composing the Christ- 
mas pantomime, which our young folks will 
see and note anon in their little diaries. 

And now, brethren, may I conclude this dis- 
course with an extract out of that great diary, 
the newspaper? I read it but yesterday, and 
it has mingled with all my thoughts since then. 
Here are the two paragraphs, which appeared 
following each other: — 

" Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, 
has been appointed to the post of Legislative 
Member of the Council of the Governor- 
General." 

'•' Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor-General 
13G 



Roundabout Papers 

for Central India, died on the 29tli of October, 
of bronchitis." 

These two men, whose difierent fates are re- 
corded in two paragraphs and half-a-dozen 
lines of the same newspaper, were sisters' sons. 
In one of the stories by the present writer, a 
man is described tottering " up the steps of the 
ghaut," having just parted with his child, 
whom he is despatching to England from India. 
I wrote this, remembering in long, long distant 
days, such a ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta; 
and a day when, down those steps, to a boat 
W'hich was in waiting, came two children, 
whose mothers remained on the shore. One of 
those ladies was never to see her boy more; 
and he, too, is just dead in India, " of bron- 
chitis, on the 29th of October." We were first- 
cousins; had been little playmates and friends 
from the time of our birth; and the first house 
in London to which I was taken, was that of 
our aunt, the mother of his Honour the Mem- 
ber of Council. His Honour was even then a 
gentleman of the long robe, being, in truth, a 
baby in arms. We Indian children were con- 
signed to a school of which our deluded parents 
had heard a favourable report, but wiiich was 
governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made 
our young lives so miserable that I remember 
kneeling by my little bed of a night, and say- 
ing, " Pray God, I may dream of my mother ! " 
Thence we went to a public school; and my 
cousin to Addiscombe and to India. 
127 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

" For thirty-two years/' the paper says, " Sir 
Kichmoiid Shakespear faithfully and devotedly 
served the Government of India, and during 
that period but once visited England, for a few 
months and on public duty. In his military 
capacity he saw much service, was present in 
eight general engagements, and was badiy 
wounded in the last. In 1840, when a young- 
lieutenant, he had the rare good fortune to be 
the means of rescuing from almost hopeless 
slavery in Khiva 41G subjects of the Emperor 
of Russia; and, but two years later, greatly 
contributed to the happy recovery of our own 
prisoners from a similar fate in Cabul. 
Throughout his career this officer was ever 
ready and zealous for the public service, and 
freely risked life and liberty in the discharge 
of his duties. Lord Canning, to mark his high 
sense of Sir Richmond Shakespear's public ser- 
vices, had lately offered him the Chief Commis- 
sionership of Mysore, which he had accepted, 
and was about to undertake, when death ter- 
minated his career." 

When he came to London the cousins and 
playfellows of early Indian days met once 
again, and shook hands. " Can I do anything 
for you?" I remember the kind fellow asking. 
He was always asking that question: of all 
kinsmen; of all widows and orphans; of all 
the poor; of young men who might need his 
purse or his service. I saw a young officer 
yesterday to whom the first words Sir Rich- 
128 



Roundabout Papers 

mond Shakespear vviote on his arrival in India 
were, "Can I do anything for you?" His 
purse was at the command of all. His kind 
hand was always open. It was a gracious fate 
which sent him to rescue widows and captives. 
Where could they have had a champion more 
chivalrous, a protector more loving and tender? 
I write down his name in my little book, 
among those of others dearly loved, who, too, 
have been summoned hence. And so we meet 
and part; we struggle and succeed; or we fail 
and drop unknown on the way. As we leave 
the fond mother's knee, the rough trials of 
childhood and boyhood begin; and then man- 
hood is upon us, and the battle of life, with its 
chances, perils, wounds, defeats, distinctions. 
And Fort William guns are saluting in one 
man's honour,* while the troops are firing the 
* W. R. obiit March 22, 1862. 

Note.— The following was written on the day after the 
death of the Prince Consort :— 

December 16. Going to the Printer's to revise the last 
pages, I walk by closed shutters; by multitudes already 
dressed in black ; through a city in mourning. Among the 
widows deploring the dearest and best beloved, among the 
children who are fatherless, it has pleased Heaven to number 
the Queen and her family ; and the millions, who knelt in 
our churches yesterday in supplication before the only Euler 
of Princes, had to omit a name which for twenty-one years 
has been familiar to their prayers. Wise, just, moderate, 
admirably pure of life, the friend of science, of freedom, of 
peace and all peaceful arts, the Consort of the Queen passes 
from our troubled sphere to that serene one where justice 
and peace reign eternal. At a moment of awful doubt and, 
it may be, danger, Heaven calls away, from the Wife's, the 
9 129 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

last volleys over the other's grave — over the 
grave of the brave, the gentle, the faithful 
Christian soldier. 



NIL NISI BONUM 

Almost the last words which Sir Walter 
spoke to Lockhart, his biographer, were, " Be 
a good man, my dear! " and with the last 
flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed 
a farewell to his family, and passed away 
blessing them. 

Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have 
just left us, the Goldsmith and the Gibbon of 
our time.* Ere a few weeks are over, many a 
critic's pen will be at work, reviewing their 
lives and passing judgment on their works. 
This is no review, or history, or criticism: only 
a word in testimony of respect and regard from 
a man of letters, who owes to his own profes- 
sional labour the honour of becoming ac- 
quainted with these two eminent literary men. 
One was the first ambassador whom the New 
World of Letters sent to the Old. He was 

Sovereign ''s side, her dearest friend and councillor. But he 
leaves that throne and its widowed mistress to the guardian- 
ship of a great people, whose affectionate respect her life 
has long since earned ; whose best sympathies attend her 
grief ; and whose best strength and love and loyalty will 
defend licr honour. 

* Washington Irving died, November 28, 1859 ; Lord 
Macaulay died, December 28, 1859. 
130 



Roundabout Papers 

born almost with the republic; the pater 
patriw had laid his hand on the child's head. 
He bore Washington's name: he came amongst 
us bringing the kindest sympathy, the most 
artless, smiling goodwill. His new country 
(which some people here might be disposed to 
regard rather superciliously) could send us, as 
he showed in his own person, a gentleman, who, 
though himself born in no very high sphere, 
was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet; 
and, socially, the equal of the most refined 
Europeans. If Irving's welcome in England 
was a kind one, was it not also gratefully re- 
membered? If he ate our salt, did he not pay 
us with a thankful heart? Who can calculate 
the amount of friendliness and good feeling for 
our country which this writer's generous and 
untiring regard for us disseminated in his own? 
His books are read by millions* of his country- 
men, whom he has taught to love England, and 
why to love her. It would have been easy to 
speak otherwise than he did: to inflame na- 
tional rancours, which, at the time when he 
first became known as a public writer, war had 
just renewed: to cry down the old civilization 
at the expense of the new: to point out our 
faults, arrogance, short-comings, and give the 
republic to infer how much she was the parent 
state's superior. There are writers enough in 
the United States, honest and otherwise, who 

*See his Life in the most remarkable Dictionary of 
Authors, published lately at Philadelphia, by Mr. Alibone. 
331 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

preach that kind of doctrine. But the good 
Irving, the peaceful^ the friendly, had no place 
for bitterness in his heart, and no scheme 
but kindness. Received in England with ex- 
traordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, 
Southey, Byron, a hundred others have borne 
witness to their liking for him), he was a mes- 
senger of goodwill and peace between his 
country and ours, " See, friends ! " he seems 
to say, " these English are not so wicked, rapa- 
cious, callous, proud, as you have been taught 
to believe them. I went amongst them a 
humble man; won my way by my pen; and, 
when known, found every hand held out to me 
with kindliness and welcome. Scott is a great 
man, you acknowledge. Did not Scott's King 
of England give a gold medal to him, and an- 
other to me, your countryman, and a stranger ? " 
Tradition in the United States still fondly 
retains the history of the feasts and rejoicings 
which awaited Irving on his return to his native 
country from Europe. He had a national wel- 
come; he stammered in his speeches, hid him- 
self in confusion, and the people loved him all 
the better. He had worthily represented Amer- 
ica in Europe. In that young community a 
man who brings home with him abundant 
European testimonials is still treated with re- 
spect (I have found American writers, of wide- 
world reputation, strangely solicitous about the 
opinions of quite obscure British critics, and 
elated or depressed by their judgments) ; and 
133 



Roundabout Papers 

Irving went home medalled by the King, dip- 
lomatized by the University, crowned and hon- 
oured and admired. He had not in any way 
intrigued for his honours, he had fairly won 
them; and, in Irving's instance, as in others, 
the old country was glad and eager to pay 
them. 

In America the love and regard for Irving 
was a national sentiment. Party wars are per- 
petually raging there, and are carried on by 
the press with a rancour and fierceness against 
individuals which exceed British, almost Irish, 
virulence. It seemed to me, during a year's 
travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed a 
blow at Irving. All men held their hands from 
that harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the 
good fortune to see him at New York, Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore, and Washington,* and re- 
marked how in every place he was honoured 
and welcome. Every large city has its "Irving 
House." The country takes pride in the fame 
of its men of letters. The gate of his own 
charming little domain on the beautiful Hudson 
Kiver was for ever swinging before visitors who 
came to him. He shut out no one.f I had 

* At Washington, Mr. Irving came to a lecture given by 
the writer, which Mr, Filmore and General Pierce, the Presi- 
dent and President Elect, were also kind enough to attend 
together. "Two Kings of Brentford smelling at one rose," 
says Irving, looking up with his good-humoured smile. 

t Mr. Irving described to me, with that humour and good 
humour which he always kept, how, am.ongst other visitors, 
a member of the British press who had carried his distin- 
133 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

seen many pictures of his house, and read de- 
scriptions of it, in both of which it was treated 
with a not unusual American exaggeration. It 
was but a pretty little cabin of a place; the 
gentleman of the press who took notes of the 
place, whilst his kind old host was sleeping, 
might have visited the whole house in a couple 
of minutes. 

And how came it that this house was so 
small, when Mr. Irving's books were sold by 
hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, when his 
profits were known to be large, and the habits 
of life of the good old bachelor were notoriously 
modest and simple? He had loved once in his 
life. The lady he loved died; and he, whom all 
the world loved, never sought to replace her. I 
can't say how much the thought of that fidelity 
has touched me. Does not the very cheerful- 
ness of his after life add to the pathos of that 
untold story? To grieve always was not in his 
nature; or, when he had his sorrow, to bring 
all the world in to condole with him and be- 
moan it. Deep and quiet he lays the love of 
his heart, and buries it; and grass and flowers 
grow over the scarred ground in due time. 

giiislied pen to America (where he employed it in vilifying 
his own country) came to Sunnyside, introduced himself 
to Irving, partook of his wine and luncheon, and in two days 
described Mr. Irving, his house, his nieces, his meal, and his 
manner of dozing afterwards, in a New York paper. On 
another occasion, Irving said, laughing, " Two persons came 
to me, and one held me in conversation whilst the other miS' 
creant took my portrait ! " 

134 



Roundabout Papers 

Irving had such a small house and such nar- 
row rooms, because there was a great number 
of people to occupy them. He could only afford 
to keep one old horse (which, lazy and aged as 
it was, managed once or twice to run away with 
that careless old horseman). He could only 
afford to give plain sherry to that amiable 
British paragraph-monger from New York, who 
saw the patriarch asleep over his modest, blame- 
less cup, and fetched the public into his private 
chamber to look at him. Irving could only live 
very modestly, because the wifeless, childless 
man had a number of children to whom he was 
as a father. He had as many as nine nieces, 1 
am told — I saw two of these ladies at his house 
— with all of whom the dear old man had shared 
the produce of his labour and genius. 

''Be a good man, my dear." One can't but 
think of these last words of the veteran Chief 
of Letters, who had tasted and tested the value 
of worldly success, admiration, prosperity. Was 
Irving not good, and of his works, was not his 
life the best part? In his family, gentle, gener- 
ous, good-humoured, affectionate, self-denying: 
in society, a delightful example of complete 
gentlemanhood ; quite unspoiled by prosperity; 
never obsequious to the great (or, worse still, 
to the base and mean, as some public men are 
forced to be in his and other countries) ; eager 
to acknowledge every contemporary's merit; al- 
ways kind and affable to the young members of 
his calling; in his professional bargains and 
1U3 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

mercantile dealings delicately honest and grate- 
ful; one of the most charming masters of our 
lighter language; the constant friend to us and 
our nation; to men of letters doubly dear,. not 
for his wit and genius merely, but as an ex- 
emplar of goodness, probity, and pure life; — I 
don't know what sort of testimonial will be 
raised to him in his own country, where generous 
and enthusiastic acknowledgment of American 
merit is never wanting: but Irving was in our 
service as well as theirs; and as they have 
placed a stone at Greenwich yonder in memory 
of that gallant young Bellot, who shared the 
perils and fate of some of our Arctic seamen, 
I would like to hear of some memorial raised 
by English writers and friends of letters in af- 
fectionate remembrance of the dear and good 
Washington Irving. 

As for the other writer, whose departure 
many friends, some few most dearly-loved rela- 
tives, and multitudes of admiring readers de- 
plore, our republic has already decreed his 
statue, and he must have known that he had 
earned this posthumous honour. He is not a 
poet and man of letters merely, but citizen, 
statesman, a great British worthy. Almost 
from the first moment when he appears, 
amongst boys, amongst college students, 
amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank 
as a great Englishman. All sorts of successes 
are easy to him: as a lad he goes down into 
the arena with others, and wins all the prizes 
136 



Roundabout Papers 

to which he has a mind. A place in the senate 
is straightway ofiered to the young man. He 
takes his seat there ; he speaks, when so minded, 
without party anger or intrigue, but not with- 
out party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm 
for his cause. Still he is poet and philosopher 
even more than orator. That he may have 
leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, 
he absents himself for a while, and accepts a 
richly-remunerative post in the East. As 
learned a man may live in a cottage or a col- 
lege common-room; but it always seemed to 
me that ample means and recognized rank were 
Macaulay's as of right. Years ago there was a 
wretched outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay 
dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he 
was staying. Immortal gods! Was this man 
not a fit guest for any palace in the world? or 
a fit companion for any man or woman in it? 
1 dare say, after Austerlitz, the old K. K. court 
officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for 
dating from Schonbrunn. But that miserable 
" Windsor Castle " outcry is an echo out of fast- 
retreating old world remembrances. The place 
of such a natural chief was amongst the first 
in the land; and that country is best, according 
to our British notion at least, where the man 
of eminence has the best chance of investing 
his genius and intellect. 

If a company of giants were got together, 
very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six 
people might be angry at the incontestable 
137 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

superiority of the very tallest of the party: 
and so 1 have heard some London wits, rather 
peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain 
that he occupied too much of the talk, and so 
forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak 
no more, will not many a man grieve that 
he no longer has the chance to listen? To re- 
member the talk is to wonder: to think not 
only of the treasures he had in his memory, 
but of the trifles he had stored there, and 
could ^produce with equal readiness. Almost 
on the last day I had the fortune to see him, 
conversation happened suddenly to spring up 
about senior wranglers, and what they had 
done in after life. To the almost terror of the 
persons present, Macaulay began with the 
senior wrangler of 1801-2-3-4, and so on, giving 
the name of each, and relating his subsequent 
career and rise. Every man who has known 
him has his story regarding that astonishing 
memory. It may be that he was not ill pleased 
that you should recognise it; but to those pro- 
digious intellectual feats, which were so easy 
to him, who would grudge his tribute of hom- 
age? His talk was, in a word, admirable, and 
we admired it. 

Of the notices which have appeared regarding 
Lord Macaulay, up to the day when the present 
lines are written (the 9th of January), the 
reader should not deny himself the pleasure of 
looking especially at two. It is a good sign of 
the times when such articles as these (I mean 
138 



Roundabout Papers 

the articles in " The Times " and " Saturday- 
Review '"') appear in our public prints about 
our public men. They educate us, as it were, 
to admire rightly. An uninstructed person in 
a museum or at a concert may pass by without 
recognising a picture or a passage of music, 
which the connoisseur by his side may show 
him is a masterpiece of harmony, or a wonder 
of artistic skill. After reading these papers 
you like and respect more the person you have 
admired so much already. And so with regard 
to Macaulay's style there may be faults of 
course — what critic can't point them out? But 
for the nonce we are not talking about faults: 
we want to say nil nisi honum. Well — take at 
hazard any three pages of the " Essays " or 
"History;" — and, glimmering below the stream 
of the narrative, as it were, you, an average 
reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allu- 
sions to other historic facts, characters, litera- 
ture, poetry, with which you are acquainted. 
Why is this epithet used? Whence is that 
simile drawn? How does he manage, in two 
or three words, to paint an individual, or to 
indicate a landscape? Your neighbour, who 
has Ms reading, and his little stock of litera- 
ture stowed away in his mind, shall detect more 
points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not 
only the prodigious memory and vast learning 
of this master, but the wonderful industry, the 
honest, humble previous toil of this great 
scholar. He reads twenty books to write a 

ia9 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

sentence; lie travels a hundred miles to make 
a line of description. 

Many Londoners — not all — have seen the 
British Museum Library. I speak a coeur ou- 
vert, and pray the kindly reader to bear with 
me. I have seen all sorts of domes of Peters 
and Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon, — what not? — and 
have been struck by none of them so much as 
by that catholic dome in Bloomsbury, under 
which our million volumes are housed. What 
peace, what love, what truth, what beauty, 
what happiness for all, what generous kindness 
for you and me, are here spread out ! It seema 
to me one cannot sit down in that place with- 
out a heart full of grateful reverence. I own 
to have said my grace at the table, and to 
have thanked heaven for this my English birth- 
right, freely to partake of these bountiful books, 
and to speak the truth I find there. Under the 
dome which held JNIacaulay's brain, and- from 
which his solemn eyes looked out on the world 
but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, 
and wonderful store of learning was ranged! 
what strange lore would he not fetch for you 
at your bidding! A volume of law, or history, 
a book of poetry familiar or forgotten (except 
by himself who forgot nothing), a novel ever 
so old, and he had it at hand. I spoke to him 
once about " Clarissa." " Not read ' Qarissa!' " 
he cried out. " If you have once thoroughly 
entered on * Clarissa ' nnd are infected by it, 
you can't leave it When I was in India I 
140 



Roundabout Papers 

passed one hot season at the hills, and there 
were the Governor-General, and the Secretary 
of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief, 
and their vv^ives. I had 'Clarissa' with me: 
and, as soon as they began to read, the whole 
station was in a passion of excitement about 
Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her 
scoundrelly Lovelace! The Governor's wife 
seized the book, and the Secretary waited for 
it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for 
tears! " He acted the whole scene: he paced 
up and down the "Athenasum" library: I dare 
say he could have spoken pages of the book — 
of that book, and of what countless piles of 
others ! 

In this little paper let us keep to the text of 
nil nisi bonum. One paper 1 have read regard- 
ing Lord Macaulay sa^^s " he had no heart." 
Why, a man's books may not always speak the 
truth, but they speak his mind in spite of him- 
self: and it seems to me this man's heart is 
beating through every page he penned. He is 
always in a storm of revolt and indignation 
against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he cheers 
heroic resistance; how he backs and applauds 
freedom struggling for its own; how he hates 
scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful; 
how he recognizes genius, though selfish villains 
possess it! The critic who says Macaulay had 
no heart, might say that Johnson had none: 
and two men more generous, and more loving, 
and more hating, and more partial, and more 
14t 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

noble, do not live in our history. Those who 
knew Lord Maeaulay knew how admirably 
tender and generous * and affectionate he was. 
It was not his business to bring his family be- 
fore the theatre footlights, and call for bouquets 
from the gallery as he wept over them. 

If any young man of letters reads this little 
sermon — and to him, indeed, it is addressed — • 
I would say to him, " Bear Scott's words in 
your mind, and ' he good, my dear.' " Here are 
two literary men gone to their account, and, 
laus Deo, as far as we know, it is fair, and open, 
and clean. Here is no need of apologies for 
shortcomings, or explanations of vices which 
would have been virtues but for unavoidable 
&c. Here are two examples of men most dif- 
ferently gifted: each pursuing his calling; each 
speaking his truth as God bade him; each 
honest in his life; just and irreproachable in 
his dealings; dear to his friends; honoured by 
his country; beloved at his fireside. It has 
been the fortunate lot of both to give incal- 
culable happiness and delight to the world, 
which thanks them in return with an immense 
kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be 
our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with 
such merit, or rewarded with such fame. But 
the rewards of these men are rewards paid to 

* Since the above was written, I have been informed that 
it has been found, on examining Lord Macaulay's papers, 
that he was in the habit of giving away more than a fourth 
part of his annual income. 

142 



Roundabout Papers 

our service. We may not win the baton or 
epaulettes; but God give us strength to guard 
the honour of the flag! 



DE FINIBUS 

When Swift was in lovs with Stella, and 
despatching her a letter from London thrice a 
month, by the Irish packet, you may remember 
how he would begin letter No. xxiii., we will 
say, on the very day when xxii. had been sent 
away, stealing out of the coliee- house or the 
assembly so as to be able to prattle with his 
dear; "never letting go her kind hand, as it 
were," as some commentator or other has said 
in speaking ol the Dean and his amour. When 
Mr. Johnson, walking to Dodsiey's, and touch- 
ing the posts in Pall Mall as he walked, forgot 
to pat the head of one of them, he went back 
and imposed his hands on it, — impelled I know 
not by what superstition. I have this I hope 
not dangerous mania too. As soon as a piece 
of work is out of hand, and before going to 
sleep, I like to begin another: it may be to 
write only half a dozen lines: but that is some- 
thing towards Number the Next. The printer's 
boy has not yet reached Green Arbour Court 
with the copy. Those people who were alive 
half an hour since, Pendennis, Clive Newcome, 
and (what do you call him? what was the 
name of the last hero? I remember now!) 
143 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

Philip I'irmin, liave hardly drunk their glass 
of wine, and the mammas have only this minute 
got the children's cloaks on, and have been 
bowed out of my premises — and here I come 
back to the study again: tamen usque rcciirro. 
How lonely it looks now all these people are 
gone! My dear good friends, some folks are 
utterly tired of you, and say, " V/hat a poverty 
of friends the man has! He is always asking 
us to meet those Pendennises, Newcomes, and so 
forth, AVhy does he not introduce us to some 
new characters? Why is he not thrilling like 
Twostars, learned and profound like Three- 
stars, exquisitely humourous and human like 
Fourstars? Why, finally, is he not somebody 
else ? " My good people, it is not only impos- 
sible to please you all, but it is absurd to try. 
The dish which one man devours, another dis- 
likes. Is the dinner of to-day not to your taste ? 
Let us hope to-morrow's entertainment will be 
more agreeable. * ^^ i resume my original 
subject. What an odd, pleasant, humourous, 
melancholy feeling it is to sit in the study 
alone and quiet, now all these people are gone 
who have been boarding and lodging with me 
for twenty months! They have interrupted 
my rest: they have plagued me at all sorts of 
minutes: they have thrust themselves upon me 
when I was ill, or wished to be idle, and I have 
growled out a " Be hanged to you, can't you 
leave me alone now?" Once or twice they have 
prevented my going out to dinner. Many and 
144 



Roundabout Papers 

many a time they have prevented my coming 
home, because I knew they were there waiting 
in the study, and a plague take them, and I 
have left home and family, and gone to dine at 
the Club, and told nobody where I went. They 
have bored me, those people. They have 
plagued me at all sorts of uncomfortable hours. 
They have made such a disturbance in my mind 
and house, that sometimes I have hardly known 
what w^as going on in my family and scarcely 
have . heard what my neighbour said to me. 
They are gone at last, and you would expect 
me to be at ease? Far from it. I should al- 
most be glad if Woolcomb would walk in and 
talk to me; or Twysden reappear, take his 
place in that chair opposite me, and begin one 
of his tremendous stories. 

Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conver- 
sations with, even draw the likeness of, people 
invisible to you and me. Is this making of 
people out of fancy madness? and are novel- 
writers at all entitled to strait- waistcoats ? I 
often forget people's names in life; and in my 
own stories contritely own that I make dread- 
ful blunders regarding them; but I declare, my 
dear sir, with respect to the personages intro- 
duced into your humble servant's fables, I know 
the people utterly — I know the sound of their 
voices. A gentleman came in to see me the 
other day, who was so like the picture of Philip 
Firmin in Mr. Walker's charming drawings in 
the " Cornhill Magazine " that he was quite a 
10 145 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

curiosity to me. The same eyes, beard, shoul- 
ders, just as you have seen them from month 
to month. Well, he is not like the Philip Fir- 
min in my mind. Asleep, asleep in the grave, 
lies the bold, the generous, the reckless, the 
tender-hearted creature whom I have made to 
pass through those adventures which have just 
been brought to an end. It is years since I 
heard the laughter ringing, or saw the bright 
blue eyes. When I knew him both were young. 
I become young as I think of him. And this 
morning he was alive again in this room, ready 
to laugh, to fight, to weep. As I write, do you 
know, it is the grey of evening; the house is 
quiet; everybody is out; the room is getting 
a little dark, and I look rather wistfully up 
from the paper with perhaps ever so little fancy 

that HE MAY COME IN. No? No 

movement. No grey shade, growing more pal- 
pable, out of which at last look the well-known 
eyes. No, the printer came and took him away 
with the last page of the proofs. And with 
the printer's boy did the whole cortege of 
ghosts flit away, invisible! Ha! stay! what 
is this? Angels and ministers of grace! The 
door opens, and a dark form — enters, bearing 
a black — a black suit of clothes. It is John. 
He says it is time to dress for dinner. 

* * * * * 

Every man who has had his German tutor, 
and has been coached through the famous 
"Faust" of Goethe (thou wert my instructor, 
14G 



Roundabout Papers 

good old Weissenborn, and these eyes beheld 
the great master himself in dear little Weimar 
town ! ) has read those charming verses which 
are prefixed to the drama, in which the poet 
reverts to the time when his work was first 
composed, and recalls the friends now departed, 
who once listened to his song. The dear shad- 
ows rise up around him, he says; he lives in the 
past again. It is to-day which appears vague 
and visionary. We humbler Avriters cannot 
create Fausts, or raise up monumental works 
that shall endure for all ages; but our books 
are diaries, in which our own feelings must of 
necessity be set down. As we look to the page 
WTitten last month, or ten years ago, we re- 
member the day and its events; the child ill, 
mayhap, in the adjoining room, and the doubts 
and fears which racked the brain as it still 
pursued its work; the dear old friend who read 
the commencement of the tale, and whose gentle 
hand shall be laid in ours no more. I own for 
my part that, in reading pages which this hand 
penned formerly, I often lose sight of the text 
under my eyes. It is not the words I see; but 
that past day; that bygone page of life's his- 
tory; that tragedy, comedy it may be, which 
our little home company was enacting; that 
merry-making which we shared; that funeral 
which w^e followed; that bitter, bitter grief 
which we buried. 

And, such being the state of my mind, I 
pray gentle readers to deal kindly with their 
147 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

humble servant's manifold short-comings, blun- 
ders, and slips of memory. As sure as I read 
a page of my own composition, I find a fault 
or two, half-a-dozen. Jones is called Brown. 
Brown, who is dead, is brought to life. Aghast, 
and months after the number was printed, I 
saw that I had called Philip Firmin, Clive 
Newcome. Now Clive Newcome is the hero of 
another story by the reader's most obedient 
writer. The two men are as different, in my 
mind's eye, as — as Lord Palmerston and Mr. 
Disraeli let us say. But there is that blunder 
at page 990, line 76, volume 84 of the " Corn- 
hill Magazine," and it is past mending; and I 
wish in my life I had made no worse blunders 
or errors than that which is hereby acknowl- 
edged. 

Another Finis written. Another mile-stone 
passed on this journey from birth to the next 
world! Sure it is a subject for solemn cogita- 
tion. Shall we continue this story-telling busi- 
ness and be voluble to the end of our age? 
Will it not be presently time, O prattler, to 
hold your tongue, and let younger people speak ? 
I have a friend, a painter, who, like other per- 
sons who shall be nameless, is growing old. 
He has never painted with such laborious fin- 
ish as his works now show. This master is 
still the most humble and diligent of scholars. 
Of Art, his mistress, he is always an eager, 
reverent pupil. In his calling, in yours, in 
mine, industry and humility will help and com- 
148 



Roundabout Papers 

fort us. A word with you. In a pretty large 
experience I liave not found the men who write 
books superior in wit or learning to those who 
don't write at all. In regard of mere informa- 
tion, non-writers must often be superior to 
writers. You don't expect a lawyer in full 
practice to be conversant with all kinds of 
literature; he is too busy with his law; and 
so a writer is commonly too busy with his own 
books to be able to bestow attention on the 
works of other people. After a day's work (in 
which I have been depicting, let us say, the 
agonies of Louisa on parting with the Captain, 
or the atrocious behaviour of the wicked Mar- 
quis to Lady Emily) I march to the Club, pro- 
posing to improve my mind and keep myself 
" posted up," as the Americans phrase it, in the 
literature of the day. And what happens? 
Given, a walk after luncheon, a pleasing book, 
and a most comfortable arm-chair by the fire, 
and you know the rest. A doze ensues. Pleas- 
ing book drops suddenly, is picked up once 
with an air of some confusion, is laid presently 
softly in lap: head falls on comfortable arm- 
chair cushion: eyes close: soft nasal music is 
heard. Am I telling Club secrets? Of after- 
noons, after lunch, I say, scores of sensible 
fogies have a doze. Perhaps I have fallen 
asleep over that very book to which " Finis " 
has just been written. " And if the writer 
sleeps, what happens to the readers?" says 
"'ones, coming down upon me with his light- 
149 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

ning wit. What? You did sleep over it? And 
a very good thing too. These eyes have more 
than once seen a friend dozing over pages w^hich 
this hand has written. There is a vignette 
somewhere in one of my books of a friend so 
caught napping with " Pendennis," or the 
" Newcomes," in his lap; and if a writer can 
give you a sweet soothing, harmless sleep, has 
he not done you a kindness? So is the author 
who excites and interests you worthy of your 
thanks and benedictions. I am troubled with 
fever and ague, that seize me at odd intervals 
and prostrate me for a day. There is cold fit, 
for which, I am thankful to say, hot brandy- 
and-water is prescribed, and this induces hot 
fit, and so on. In one or two of these fits I have 
read novels with the most fearful contentment 
of mind. Once, on the Mississippi, it was my 
dearly beloved " Jacob Faithful: " once at 
Frankfort O. M., the delightful " Vingt Ans 
Apres " of Monsieur Dumas : once at Tunbridge 
Wells, the thrilling " Woman in White : " and 
these books gave me amusement from morning 
till sunset. I remember those ague fits wilh a 
great deal of pleasure and gratitude. Think 
of a whole day in bed, and a good novel for a 
companion! No cares: no remorse about idle- 
ness: no visitors: and the Woman in White or 
the Chevalier d'Artagnan to tell me stories 
from dawn to night! " Please, ma'am, my mas- 
ter's compliments, and can he have the third 
volume? " (This message was sent to an aston- 
150 



Roundabout Papers 

ished friend and neighbour who lent me volume 
by volume, the W. in \V.) How do you like 
your novels ? I like mine strong, " hot with," 
and no mistake: no love-making: no observa- 
tions about society: little dialogue, except 
where the characters are bullying each other: 
plenty of fighting: and a villain in the cup- 
board, who is to suffer tortures just before Finis. 
I don't like your melancholy Finis. I never 
read the history of a consumptive heroine twice. 
If I might give a short hint to an impartial 
writer (as the "Examiner" used to say in old 
days), it would be to act, not a la mode le pays 
de Pole (I think that was the phraseology), 
but always to give quarter. In the story of 
Philip, just come to an end, I have the permis- 
sion of the author to state that he was going 
to drown the two villains of the piece — a cer- 
tain Doctor F and a certain Mr. T. H 

on board the '' President," or some other tragic 
ship — but you see I relented. I pictured to 
myself Firmin's ghastly face amid the crowd 
of shuddering people on that reeling deck in 
the lonely ocean, and thought, " Thou ghastly 
lying wretch, thou shalt not be drowned: thou 
shalt have a fever only; a knowledge of thy 
danger; and a chance — ever so small a chance 
— of repentance." I wonder whether he did 
repent Avhen he found himself in the yellow- 
fever, in Virginia? The probability is, he fan- 
cied that his son had injured him very much, 
and forgave him on his deathbed. Do you im- 
151 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

cgine there is a great deal oi genuine right- 
down remorse in tlie world? Don't people 
rather find excuses which make their minds 
easy; endeavour to prove to themselves that 
they have been lamentably belied and mis- 
understood; and try and forgive the persecu- 
tors who will present that bill when it is due; 
and not bear malice against the cruel ruffian 
who takes them to the police-office for stealing 
the spoons? Years ago I had a quarrel with 
a certain well-known person (1 believed a state- 
ment regarding him which his friends imparted 
to me, and which turned out to be quite in- 
correct). To his dying day that quarrel was 
never quite made up. I said to his brother, 
" Why is your brother's soul still dark against 
me? It is I who ought to be angry and un- 
forgiving: for 1 was in the wrong." In the 
region which they now inhabit (for Finis has 
been set to the volumes of the lives of both 
here below), if they take any cognizance of our 
squabbles, and tittle-tattles, and gossips on earth 
here, I hope they admit that my little error was 
not of a nature unpardonable. If you have 
never committed a worse, my good sir, surely 
the score against you will not be heavy. Ha, 
diJedissimi fratresf It is in regard of sins not 
found out that we may say or sing (in an 
under-tone, in a most penitent and lugubrious 
minor key), ^'Miserere nobis miseris peccatori- 
bus.'" 

Among the sins of commission which novel- 
152 



Roundabout Papers 

writers not seldom perpetrate, is the sin of 
grandiloquence, or tall-talking, against which, 
for my part, 1 will offer up a special libera me. 
This is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, 
critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or 
old people. Nay (for I am making a clean 
breast, and liberating my soul), perhaps of 
all the novel-spinners now extant, the present 
speaker is the most addicted to preaching. 
Does he not stop perpetually in his story and 
begin to preach to you? When he ought to be 
engaged with business, is he not for ever tak- 
ing the Muse by the sleeve, and plaguing her 
with some of his cynical sermons? I cry peccavi 
loudly and heartily. I tell you I would like 
to be able to write a story which should show 
no egotism whatever — in which there should 
be no reflections, no cynicism, no vulgarity, 
(and so forth), but an incident in every other 
page, a villain, a battle, a mystery in every 
chapter, I should like to be able to feed a 
reader so spicily as to leave him hungering and 
thirsting for more at the end of every monthly 
meal. 

Alexandre Dumas describes himself, when in- 
venting the plan of a work, as lying silent on 
his back for two whole days on the deck of a 
yacht in a Mediterranean port. At the end of 
the two days he arose and called for dinner. 
In those two days he had built his plot. He 
had moulded a mighty clay, to be cast presently 
in perennial brass. The chapters, the charac- 
153 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

ters, the incidents, the combinations were all 
arranged in the artist's brain ere he set a pen 
to paper. My Pegasus won't fly, so as to let 
me survey the field below me. He has no wings, 
he is blind of one eye certainly, he is restive^ 
stubborn, slow; crops a hedge when he ought 
to be galloping, or gallops when he ought to be 
quiet. He never will show off when I want 
him. Sometimes he goes at a pace which sur- 
prises me. Sometimes, when I most wish him 
to make the running, the brute turns restive, 
and I am obliged to let him take his own time. 
I wonder do other novel-writers experience this 
fatalism ? They must go a certain way, in spite 
of themselves. I have been surprised at the 
observations made by some of my characters. 
It seems as if an occult Power was moving the 
pen. The personage does or says something, 
and I ask, how the dickens did he come to think 
of that? Every man has remarked in dreams, 
the vast dramatic power which is sometimes 
evinced; I won't say the surprising power, for 
nothing does surprise you in dreams. But those 
strange characters you meet make instant ob- 
servations of which you never can have thought 
previously. In like manner, the imagination 
foretells things. We spake anon of the inflated 
style of some writers. What also if there is an 
afffatcd style, — when a writer is like a Python- 
ess on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, 
words which he cannot help, come blowing, and 
bellowing, and whistling, and moaning through 
154 



Roundabout Papers 

the speaking pipes of his bodily organ? I have 
told you it was a very queer shock to me the 
other day when, with a letter of introduction 
in his hand, the artist's (not my) Philip Eir- 
min walked into this room, and sat down in 
the chair opposite. In the novel of " Pen- 
dennis," written ten years ago, there is an ac- 
count of a certain Costigan, whom I had in- 
vented (as I suppose authors invent their 
personages out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and 
ends of characters). I was smoking in a tavern 
parlour one night — and this Costigan came into 
the room alive — the very man: — the most re- 
markable resemblance of the printed sketches 
of the man, of the rude drawings in which I 
had depicted him. He had the same little coat, 
the same battered hat, cocked on one eye, the 
same twinkle in that eye. " Sir," said I, know- 
ing him to be an old friend whom I had met 
in unknown regions, " sir," I said, " may I offer 
you a glass of brandy-and-water? " " Bedad, 
ye may," says he, " and Til sing ye a song tit.'" 
Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of 
course he had been in the army. In ten minutes 
he pulled out an Army Agent's account, where- 
on his name was written. A few months after 
we read of him in a police court. How had I 
come to know him, to divine him? Nothing 
shall convince me that I have not seen that 
man in the world of spirits. In the Avorld of 
spirits and water I know I did: but that is a 
mere quibble of words. I was not surprised 
155 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

when he spoke in an Irish brogue. I had had 
cognizance of him before somehow. Who has 
not felt that little shock which arises when a 
person, a place, some words in a book (there is 
always a collocation) present themselves to you, 
and you know that you have before met the 
same person, words, scene, and so forth? 

They used to call the good Sir Walter the 
" Wizard of the North." What if some writer 
should appear who can write so encliantingly 
that he shall be able to call into actual life the 
people whom he invents ? What if Mignon, and 
Margaret, and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive 
now (though I don't say they are visible), and 
Diigald JJalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in 
at that open window by the little garden yon- 
der ? Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather- 
stocking were to glide silently in? Suppose 
Athos, Porthos, and Aramis- should enter with 
a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? 
And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's 
arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse, with his hair 
dyed green; and all the Crummies company of 
comedians, with the Gil Bias troop; and Sir 
Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy 
gentlemen, the Knight of La Mancha, with his 
blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather 
wistfully towards the window, musing upon 
these people. Were any of them to enter, I 
think I should not be very much frightened. 
Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have 
had with them! V\ e do not see each other 
156 



Roundabout Papers 

very often, but when we do, we are ever happy 
to meet. I had a capital half hour with Jacob 
Faithful last night; when the last sheet was 
corrected, when " Finis " had been written, and 
the printer's boy, with the copy, was safe in 
Green Arbour Court. 

So you are gone, little printer's boy, with the 
last scratches and corrections on the proof, and 
a fine flourish by way of Finis at the story's 
end. The last corrections? I say those last 
corrections seem never to be finished. A plague 
upon the weeds ! Every day, when I walk in my 
own little literary garden-plot, I spy some, and 
should like to have a spud, and root them out. 
Those idle words, neighbour, are past remedy. 
That turning back to the old pages produces 
anything but elation of mind. Would you not 
pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of 
them? Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old 
pages! Oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, 
the repetitions, the old conversations over and 
over again ! But now and again a kind thought 
is recalled, and now and again a dear memory. 
Yet a few chapters more, and then the last; 
after which, behold Finis itself come to an end, 
and the Infinite begun. 



157 



Ballads 



159 



Ballad! 



THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE 

A STREET there is in Paris famous, 

For which no rhyme our language yields, 
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is — • 

The New Street of the Little Fields. 
And here's an inn, not rich and splendid, 

But still in comfortable case; 
The which in youth I oft attended, 

To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. 

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is — 

A sort of soup or broth, or brew, 
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes. 

That Greenwich never could outdo; 
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, 

Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace: 
All these you eat at Terre's tavern. 

In that one dish of Bouillabaisse. 

Indeed, a rich and savoury stew 'tis; 

And true philosophers, methinks. 
Who love all sorts of natural beauties, 

Should love good victuals and good drinks. 
11 161 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

A.nd Cordelier or Benedictine 
Might gladly, sure, his lot embrace, 

Nor find a fast-day too afflicting, 

Which served him up a Bouillabaisse. 

I wonder if the house still there is? 

Yes, here the lamp is, as before; 
The smiling red-cheeked ecailUre is 

Still opening oysters at the door. 
Is Terr:^ still alive and able? 

I recollect his droll grimace: 
He'd come and smile before your table. 

And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse. 

We enter — nothing's changed or older. 

"How's Monsieur Terre, waiter, pray?" 
The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder — 

" Monsieur is dead this many a day." 
" It is the lot of saint and sinner, 

So honest Terre's run his race." 
" What will Monsieur require for dinner ? " 

" Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse ? '* 

" Oh, oui. Monsieur," 's the waiter's answer; 

"Quel vin Monsieur desire-t-il?" 
" Tell me a good one."—" That I can, Sir: 

The Chambertin with yellow seal." 
" So Terre's gone," I say, and sink in 

My old accustom'd corner-place; 
" He's done with feasting and with drinking, 

With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse." 
163 



Ballads 

My old. accustom'd coiner here is, 

The table still is in the nook; 
Ah! vanished many a busy year is 

This well-known chair since last I took. 
When first I saw ye, carl luoghi, 

I'd scarce a beard upon my face, 
And now a grizzled, grim old fogy, 

I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse. 

Where are you, old companions trusty 

Of early days here met to dine? 
Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty — 

I'll pledge them in the good old wine. 
The kind old voices and old faces 

My memory can quick retrace; 
Around the board they take their places, 

And share the wine and Bouillabaisse. 

There's Jack has made a wondrous marriage; 

There's laughing Tom is laughing yet; 
There's brave Augustus drives his carriage; 

There's poor old Fred in the " Gazette ; " 
On James's head the grass is growing: 

Good Lord! the world has wagged apace 
Since here we set the claret flowing. 

And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse. 

Ah me ! how quick the days are flitting ! 

I mind me of a time that's gone, 
Wlien here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting. 

In this same place — but not alone. 
163 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

A fair young form was nestled near me, 
A dear, dear face looked fondly up. 

And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me 
— There's no one now to share my cup. 



I drink it as the Fates ordain it. 

Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes: 
Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it 

In memory of dear old times. 
Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is; 

And sit you down and say your grace 
With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is 

— Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse! 



THE MAHOGANY TREE 

Christmas is here: 
Winds whistle shrill, 
Icy and chill, 
Little care we: 
Little we fear 
Weather without. 
Sheltered about 
The Mahogany Tree. 

Once on the boughs 
Birds of rare plume 
Sang, in its bloom; 
Night-birds are we: 
164 



Ballads 

Here we carouse. 
Singing like them, 
Perched round the stem 
Of the jolly old tree. 

Here let us sport. 
Boys, as we sit; 
Laughter and wit 
Flashing so free. 
Life is but short — 
When we are gone. 
Let them sing on. 
Round the old tree. 

Evenings we knew, 
Happy as this; 
Faces we miss. 
Pleasant to see. 
Kind hearts and true. 
Gentle and just. 
Peace to your dust! 
We sing round the tree. 

Care, like a dun. 
Lurks at the gate: 
Let the dog wait; 
Happy we'll be! 
Drink, every one; 
Pile up the coals, 
Fill the red bowls. 
Round the old tree! 



William Makepeace Thackeray- 



Drain we the cup. — 
Friend, art afraid? 
Spirits are laid 
In the Red Sea. 
Mantle it up; 
Empty it yet; 
Let us forget, 
Hound the old tree. 



Sorrows, begone! 
Life and its ills, 
Duns and their bills, 
Bid we to flee. 
Come with the dawn. 
Blue-devil sprite, 
Leave us to-night, 
Hound the old tree. 



THE END OF THE PLAY 

The play is done; the curtain drops, 

Slow falling to the prompter's bell: 
A moment yet the actor stops. 

And looks around, to say farewell. 
It is an irksome word and task; 

And, when he's laughed and said his say. 
He shows, as he removes the mask, 

A face that's anything but gay. 
' 16G 



Ballads 

One word, ere yet the evening ends. 

Let's close it with a parting rhyme, 
And pledge a hand to all young friends. 

As fits the merry Christmas time.* 
On life's wide scene you, too, have parts, 

That Fate ere long shall bid you play; 
Good night ! with honest gentle hearts 

A kindly greeting go alway ! 



Good-night! — I'd say, the griefs, the joys. 

Just hinted in this mimic page. 
The triumphs and defeats of boys. 

Are but repeated in our age. 
I'd say, your woes were not less keen. 

Your hopes more A^ain, than those of men; 
Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen 

At forty-five played o'er again. 



I'd say, we suffer and we strive, 

Not less nor more as men than boys, 
With grizzled beards at forty-five. 

As erst at twelve in corduroys. 
And if, in time of sacred youth. 

We learned at home to love and pray. 
Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth 

May never wholly pass away. 

* These verses were printed at the end of a Christmas booK 
(1848-9), "Dr. Birch and his Young Friends." 

167 



William Makepeace Thackeray 

And in the world, as in the school, 

I'd say, how late may change and shift; 
The prize be sometimes with the fool, 

The race not always to the swift. 
The strong may yield, the good may fall, 

The great man be a vulgar clown. 
The knave be lifted over all. 

The kind cast pitilessly down. 

Who knows the inscrutable design? 

Blessed be He who took and gave ! 
Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, 

Be weeping at her darling's grave ? * 
We bow to Heaven that will'd it so. 

That darkly rules the fate of all, 
That sends the respite or the blow. 

That's free to give, or to recall. 

This crowns his feast with wine and wit: 

Who brought him to that mirth and state? 
His betters, see, below him sit. 

Or hunger hopeless at the gate. 
Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel 

To spurn the rags of Lazarus? 
Come, brother, in that dust we'll kneel. 

Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus. 

So each shall mourn, in life's advance, 

Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed; 
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance. 
And longing passion unfulfilled. 

* C. B. ob. 29th Novomber, 1848, set. 42. 
168 



Ballads 

Amen! whatever fate be sent, 

Pray God the heart may kindly glow. 

Although the head with cares be bent. 
And whitened with the winter snow. 

Come wealth or want, come good or ill. 

Let young and old accept their part. 
And bow before the Awful Will, 

And bear it with an honest heart. 
Who misses or who wins the prize. 

Go, lose or conquer as you can; 
But if you fail, or if you rise. 

Be each, pray God, a gentleman. 

A gentleman, or old or young! 

(Bear kindly with my humble lays); 
The sacred chorus first was sung 

Upon the first of Christmas days: 
The shepherds heard it overhead — 

The joyful angels raised it then: 
Glory to Heaven on high, it said. 

And peace on earth to gentle men. 

My song, save this, is little worth; 

I lay the weary pen aside. 
And wish you health, and love, and mirth. 

As fits the solemn Christmas-tide. 
As fits the holy Christmas birth. 

Be this, good friends, our carol still- 
Be peace on earth, be peace on earth. 

To men of srentle will. 



169 



